Sandstone Peak/Mt. Allen
Summit 5 of 70
Kris's Uncle Mike was kind enough to host my stay in the L.A. area for a few days while I awaited the final load of things that I would be hauling northward on the long drive back to Bellingham. Mike is retired from the film industry there and remains an avid hiker, fisherman, and all-around outdoors geek. We hit it off well and shared dozens of stories of our various travels and life's encounters. His modest home sits at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, terrain I was well aware of but had never actually explored.
Mike kindly offered to lead me to the highest summit in the range, 3,111-foot Sandstone Peak. How cool is that! It would be my second “Sandstone” in my first five summits. As a regional superlative, this one was a perfect addition to my to-do list of peaks. The weather could not have been more perfect, although this is southern California we're talking about. That said, the state had been hammered with angry weather all winter and spring, so the current state of things atmospheric was a welcome change for all.
We drove the winding canyon roads up who knows where, and in no time at all found ourselves at the Sandstone Peak Trailhead within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. I learn that the range is actually east-west trending, having been spun around 90 degrees by the movement of tectonic plates over the ages. Albeit no sandstone here, since it's all volcanic terrain.
The hike mostly follows trail-like fire roads, for obvious reasons. The hills throughout the region are highly susceptible to fire. And fire is a good thing ecologically, quite natural and necessary, except when the flames are lapping at your doorstep. Mike has first-hand experience with that. He'd heard about a nearby wildfire some years ago, and when he checked local television coverage, the reporter was standing outside his house. He raced there, grabbed what he could on his motorcycle and fled. Fortunately, the house was saved.
We ambled up the road-trails, with wide views from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. I couldn't help but ask him about mountain lion sightings. He'd had a couple. But if they come after you, he said, you won't see them coming. They'll go for the neck. Crunch. Ouch. Next topic.
In no time we were perched on the summit of the range, and my fifth high point in ten days. At that rate I'll need 130 days to knock out the remaining 65 summits. No problema! Although, if I also want to have a life and a wife at home, I'll likely need to double the time scale, which pretty much burns up the rest of 2023. Ah well, poor me.
A final note: A plaque at the summit recognizes the gift of this land in the 1950s from a generous man by the name of W. Herbert Allen to the Boy Scouts of America. Though the mountain is known locally by two names, Sandstone is the official one. Obviously, Allen’s gift lives on.
