The plans were much debated over the entire week, ranging from spending most of the weekend in a well-chlorinated swimming pool to driving up to San Francisco or Yosemite. Nobody really wanted to spend 14 hours in a van or a jeep watching the traffic in LA and agricultural development along I-5. Settled on camping in Big Bear Lake area.
Took off late, as usual, around 10 a.m. on Saturday. Typically, Big Bear is 2.5 hours away from our place, give or take some for traffic or kids getting hungry or grumpy, or overheating motor etc. My jeep just got the transfer case transplant, eliminating this 16% overdrive, and stock fan with a new clutch. We had two jeeps in our small convoy, mine and my brother's, both full-size widetrack Cherokees. The trip was uneventful except a stop on highway 330 (known for being a long and steep grade, and usually hot weather) - tranny fluid boiled in Nick's jeep. Gave it a little rest and went on. Took the left (north shore) route, and turned off (left) in Fawnskin onto a dirt road leading up the mountain slope (marked 3N12?). Turned right at a sign to Holcomb Valley campground, and arrived to the campground around 2 p.m. Sure enough, there wasn't a single campsite available in any campground, but - near Big Bear Lake you can camp anywhere you like, on two conditions - no closer than 400 yards to any campground or private property, and no forest fires are permited, just Coleman stove or such. First condition can hardly be called restrictive - there are hundreds of square miles around to camp! And, we had this propane stove from KMart, so there wolud be no problems with hot food or water. By the way, to park in the forest you need a $5 Adventure Pass available in most stores near the lake.
Anyway, as we didn't plan to go wheelin' all day long, off we went to Big Bear Lake City - for kids to take a dip in the lake (in that sand-saturated water you've got to pay $2.50 per human body to use), for us to grab some lunch and spare parts at Napa, fuel up, etc.
In the late afternoon, we came out to a route 2N71 - which I've been familiar with since the winter trip. There's an old fire road taking right off 2N71, with loose dirt and pretty steep up the slope, so you would need a good working 4WD to get up. I believe that years ago this old road was leading to the Little Bear Peak, scoring Delamar peak on its way. Went up this trail. There wasn't much traffic on this trail lately; if you value your truck's paint - don't venture there. A few decent redwoods fallen across the trail force you to take bypasses, some of which are very tight. Some pics at the right give you an idea of a typical obstacle on the trail. Having a brush guard helps a lot; if you roll down your windows, watch out for the branches that may slap you in your face pretty hard - even my sunglasses took some beating.
As the day was getting closer to the end, we decided to find ourselves a nice campsite. The top picture at the right was taken right out of our tent!
Spent a wonderful evening and nice night - no flies, no moskitoes, and not a single stray human being in a place that is considered one of the most crowded getaways in Southern California!
There was a price to pay for the lake view, however - was that place windy!!! In the morning (when the wind already subsided!), we crawled off the tent and it lifted up!
No one was complaining, though, within our gang of five adults, four kids, and an airedale junior.
Got ourselves some lazy morning, and only got out wheelin' around 11 a.m. As I haven't managed to get past Delamar Peak in winter, I decided to take on this trail as far as we could make it.
More swerving around fallen trees. I realised that in winter I wasn't even close to Delamar Peak, and was a couple hundred feet in altitude from it. After we passed a point I though was a peak, and wheeled down the hill for a little, the trail resumed its former attitude
(end of Part 1, click on "Read On" to continue).
Is this gate on the trail natural?
Nick's bending his jeep around
the tree
How's that for a view from our tent!
Two shots of rocky or gravel trails -
in both cases the grade was
nearly 15-20 degrees!
Does it look like going down?