By 7 am, Gabriele and I had 6 participants. A 7th, Xavier Alderette, arrived as we were pulling away from the curb. He carpooled with us to the entrance to Charlton Flats where the hike began. We started around 8 for our routebagger. Charlton Flats had a movie crew set up at the beginning of the Vetter Mountain Trail. So we detoured around them and climbed Vetter. After placing a can under the lookout facing toward Wilson, we returned to Charlton Flats via the ridge road and the Silver Moccasin Trail.
We continued down Alder Creek via the Silver Moccasin Trail. We passed the movie set about 1/3 mile below Charlton Flats. A keep out sign was all that kept the curious from exploring the set. There were no lemon lilies beside Alder Creek. But we did have a variety of other flowers. We followed the trail out of the Alder Creek drainage to Chilao. At Chilao, we followed a road to the Angeles Crest Hwy. and along the Hwy 0.4 mi to a dirt road that goes over Mt Mooney. We followed this road to the saddle between Devil and Mooney. From there, we went up to the summit of Mooney via a firebreak. We placed a can on Mooney. We were back to the cars by 1 pm.
It was good to see Fred Miller again (maybe we can get him to lead again). David Stepsay remembered HPS history from the early sixties. He and I had fun talking about this during the road walking. The other participants were T. Bingo, Bruce Kutler, Rob Baldwin, and Mike Martin. My thanks to Gabriele Rau for her fine assist and for driving. My husband Erich had to work and took the car.
