This is a summary of a hike a friend and I did on April 5, 2009. We started at Middle Fork trail head in the Lytle Creek recreation area. The intent was to climb up to Mount Cucamonga and back. The trip takes the Middle Fork Trail to Ice house notch - 7600 ft. ( 5.7 miles one way ). Then from there, take the Mount Cucamonga trail to the peak ( 8900 ft ) and back ( 2.9 one way).
The trail head was much higher than expected. I knew it was 3980 feet but it did not seem that high. There are two trail that leave the trail head. The high trail cuts across through the hill on the right hand side while the lower trail is located on the bottom of the riverbed. Both trails offer different views and perspectives. In the early morning the high trail was warmer. This was nice in the chilly mornings. I can see this would be very warm trail in the summer and the lower trail would be the preferred route. The lower trail offers close views of the river bed and trees. It is a typical river bed with large rocks, boulders, a few trees and meadows. The water was running, cold and very clear.
The trails meet a few miles up so it does not make too much difference which one to take. We came to the first campsite and we lost the trail. After a little searching, we found the trail again. The trail grew much steeper in this section. We could here the waterfalls down in the bottom of the gorge. The trail also moved along some pretty wide debris/scree fields of various size of rocks. One part was the trail was gone and we had to scramble through the debris field. A little unnerving when you look down and it falls of into the bottom that you cannot see. We went through several types of climates zones. Tall forests, I think they where cedar although they looked like redwoods, open manzanita scrubs, mature oak groves.
The trail was narrow in many places but passable. We arrived at the second camp and again lost the trail. After a short search, we found it again near the back. This campsite, and the first where situated under a large canopy of trees providing cool shade all day long. After leaving the second camp, we started the long climb up to Ice House notch. There where more an more patches of snow on the ground but still easy to find the trail. The most interesting feature was a rock that had broken off way above, rolled down a long and steep snow covered slope, slammed into the snow, bounced up and slid a ways down the snow field.
About half way up, the snow started covering the trail and we had to scramble up to the top. Ice house notch is 7600 feet. It was very windy and cold at the notch. We had to put the sweaters on. As you can see from the pictures, there as still lots of snow on the south side of the ridges. 5.7 miles from Middle Fork Trail head. Our initial ideas was to climb mount Cucamonga. The trail was completely covered with snow so the only trail left to go was to Timber mountain. We went to the top of Timber Mountain ( 8300 ) and had lunch 0.9 miles from Ice House Notch. I had part of Jim's turkey sandwich and tasted great. I usually only eat cliff bars and things like that but just a few bites of the sandwich was a treat. We thought about continuing over to Telegraph peak ( 8900 ) but again, the trail was covered with snow.
We started back down and reached the car after 2.5 hours. 4.5 hours up.
