Parking is easy, just 1/4 mile past the start of the dirt.
Lake Valley Reservoir is now below, viewed from Monumental Ridge.
At Mears Meadow, the spring feeds this little seasonal creek.
Rode up to Quartz Mountain, then over to Lawton (Peak? Mountain?) Along the way are some reminders how winter can be a bit rough here. I can see this from my house - the face of the ridge gets the full brunt of winter storms.
I hiked from the end of the trail to the top, about 2/10 of a mile, about 100 ft up. Only "Lawton" is shown on the maps, but sure enough, there's a benchmark. Still no peak or mountain or whatnot.
The view is great - wish I could have done a panoramic shot, but the footing is too rough for me.
Hiking down, I noticed that the trees are missing their tops, or have grown back some strange ones.
Out to Big Valley Bluff. Here is exhibit "A" on why I think we won't see new signage even after the route designation is done.
And the view from Big Valley Bluff never gets old.
Across the canyon the patchwork of burned and unburned shows well after two winters. This was the Westville Fire that combined with the Government Spring fire. It could have been a lot worse.
Still, it's very evident.
On down FR-19, before it hits pavement near Texas Hill, I turned on a new side road. Nice one, well built! Has all the promise of getting to the "other side" on FR-45.
DOH! A friggin' tree! Dang - no chainsaw.
Oh well, back to the top. Lots of wildflowers on the hills here.
Went down a steep road that wound down into Burnett Canyon. At the bottom was a super bridge - the beams looked to be at least 18 inches, with a nice steel U-channel deck.
Unexplainably, the road then climbed very steeply, leveled out, then conked out. Nothing looks logged, Strange.
On the way back up it though, I spotted this old boiler (or something).
I then went back to the top of FR-19 and took what I call the Brushy Road down into Big Valley and up the other side to FR-38. I found two trees down and ended up winching my way over them because I hate to backtrack!
At the top, the reward is Pelham Flat, which is more of a pond.
Another nice day on The Fabulous Nineteen!
