halfway up Mt. Pleasant, a flat spot known as” the notch” was strewn across by 30-mph wind gusts. Three young men stumbling over from the mountain last weekend appeared cold, worn, and really excited to have just reached Los Angeles County’s highest level in such punishing circumstances.
Not only had they braved the event’s towering level and furious storm, they each likewise had risked a$ 5, 000 fine for violating a U. S. Forest Service closing purchase.
After a September wildfire , ravaged Mt. Baldy Village, destroying 20 properties and burning more than 50, 000 acre on surrounding hills, the U. S. Forest Service closed all of the paths leading to the castle’s spectacular mountain for more than a year — until December 2025 — to ensure public safety and promote “natural treatment” of the delicate plants and soils that had been damaged.
However, had any of the three climbers who made it up the path known as the Devil’s Backbone seen any burnt earth or trees along the way? The trail was known as the Devil’s Backbone because of its steep ridge and spine-tingling drops either part.
” No, nothing at all, the road was fine”, said Isaiah Rosas of Moreno Valley. There were” a lot of people going up and down with us.”
That’s the find. The mountain and the most popular routes leading there generally unharmed, while the town 5, 000 feet below was severely damaged by the fall Bridge fire.
The government’s closing of the hill has sparked a contentious social media argument, just like it seems to happen to other delicate public discussion these days. On the other hand, there are” road Karens,” who monitor virtual web cameras and wonder why the forest service isn’t ticketing “ignorant and arrogant” rulebreakers who are hiking the mountain anyway. On the other side, there are scofflaws who denounce the forest services as yet another “useless” government agency that is involuntarily shutting down operations in the name of” safety” at the expense of freedom.
Audio comfortable?
The company’s decision to allow outdoor businesses inside the sealed location to maintain operating, despite the alleged threats to plants and land, added fuel to the website fire.
One Reddit commenter wrote in a , especially energetic thread , that “it just cries of capitalism being fine, and has nothing to do with health or protecting our common land.”
” At the root of it, we can see it’s not about a safety issue, or trying to let the land recover, which is why I think a lot of people don’t care about the closure and will still hike”, wrote another.
Robby Ellingson is the general manager of , Mt. Baldy Resort, a small, family-run ski resort located in the heart of the mountain’s crowded, secretive area, is renowned for its fans.
In an interview, Ellingson said none of his ski runs or equipment burned, so he actively lobbied the forest service to “have the closure drawn differently”. However, the forest service gave him a variance allowing him to operate inside the closed area rather than changing the lines on the closure map. That means that his bar and restaurant, which are located halfway up the mountain and appropriately named” Top of the Notch,” will still be open. His ski runs will begin as soon as there is enough snow.
After a long, hot hike to the summit, sipping a cold beer and admiring the expansive view from the restaurant is much anticipated, so closing the popular trails in September was a devastating blow to Ellingson’s business.
” We lost our entire fall”, he said. ” We’ve kind of kept a tight lip about this, about our displeasure about this”. He’s hoping that the forest service will resign and reopen the trails in the spring as soon as the snow melts.
And he said he worries that their sweeping and strict closure decision undermines their credibility, despite his desire to maintain a good working relationship with forest service officials.
Public figures frequently choose the line between “you can never be too safe,” Ellingson said. But, actually, you can, he thinks.
” If you try to be too safe, you end up with silly rules that are counterproductive” because so many people will just ignore them.
In an email, U. S. Forest Service spokeswoman Dana Dierkes acknowledged that the most popular trails to the summit, the Devil’s Backbone and the Ski Hut Trail, did not burn in the Bridge fire. They’re closed because they “provide access to other trails that did burn”, she wrote.
Vegetation was completely consumed leaving the terrain without a natural barrier to erosion on the hillsides surrounding those burned trails, she wrote.
According to Dierkes, the forest service anticipates” catastrophic landslides and substantial debris flows within the burned area during the winter storm season,” and those dangers will continue until the vegetation recovers.
We will review the status of potential hazards and check whether some areas may be able to reopen once the winter weather has passed, Dierkes said.
Outside the Mt. Pleasant combination post office/fire station Residents of Baldy Village were last week getting ready for the possibility of landslides as the unavoidable winter storms begin to roll in. While others were setting up a distribution site for sandbags, others were installing concrete barriers in front of homes across scorched hillsides.
Locals, however, claimed that the trail closures’ broad scope and inflexibility ostensibly defy common sense.
Even the paved road just around the corner, which leads to stunning views down the valley, is closed. So when the air is warm and the sun is shining and there’s no obvious threat of a landslide from the burned hillside above, taking your dog for a morning walk on Glendora Ridge Road could, theoretically, get you stuck with a$ 5, 000 fine.
” They keep saying it has something to do with the fire, but there’s nothing left to burn”, longtime resident Cindy Debonis, 63, said, shaking her head.
” I think it’s not fair, big time, to the businesses and the locals”, she said. ” I want to walk. I’d like to go take a hike. This is where I live”.
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