This morning, I made an attempt at Mount Lukens via Haines Canyon.

The trip started out all right, but due to some bad directions and bad weather, I ended up missing an important junction, landing myself on a fire road instead of the intended trail.

I hiked up the fire road anyway, despite its frustrating winding direction, and managed to make it into the cloud cover over Tujunga. There, with visibility reduced to about 100 feet and the temperature reduced about 15 degrees, the clouds opened up and poured rain on me, soaking me to the bone.

I kept going for a while, but without the visual of the summit to motivate me (and the fact that I was losing feeling in my fingers), I turned around and headed back down.

I logged about 9 miles and some healthy elevation gain, which is what I was looking for, but the experience was fun and completely worth it once I stumbled upon this — on the trail proper:

Gives “off-roading” a whole new meaning.

I don’t know if I’m going to give this the full write-up treatment yet, as I had to keep my camera stowed for most of the trip, but I did still sneak in a few good pictures.

… oh, and it turns out the spot where I decided to run back to my car and get the feeling back to my hands was just about a mile from the summit.

Tags: car wreck, Haines Canyon, Hiking, Mount Lukens, rain, Tujunga