Introduction to
Field Guide to the San Gabriel Mountains
and
Hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains
Websites

The San Gabriel Mountains (SGM) are the mountain range forming a major part of the northern border of the Los Angeles Basin. They are one of the highest and most rugged portions of the Transverse Ranges of Southern California. The mountains have been elevated significantly within the last 10 million years, and the uplift continues today along the faults that border the mountains.

The SGM are laced with trails and roads, and are among the most visited places in the United States. The Mountains included the entire Angeles National Forest and the portion of the San Bernardino National Forest west of Cajon Pass. The Angeles National Forest has over 30 million visitors per year, more than any other National Forest.

This url (tchester.org/sgm) contains two major related sites: Field Guide to the San Gabriel Mountains and Hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Field Guide to the San Gabriel Mountains Website

This is a field guide to many aspects of the SGM, coauthored by Jane Strong and myself. As of 12/29/99, we have written ~100 webpages that include, among other pages:

• a bloom identification guide;
• information on ~50 points of interest (places);
• current and historical news;
• a field guide to the waterfalls (with Paul Ayers);
• a bibliography of printed material about the SGM;
• information about the weather; and
• information about some of the animals, such as insect pests, snakes and bears.

In addition, this site collects and organizes all web information about the SGM written by others, with ~150 such webpages indexed on 12/29/99.

See also a more complete introduction for this site.

Hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains Website

This is a hiking guide to the SGM, authored by myself. As of 12/29/99, the site includes:

• a comprehensive list of hikes, presented via maps and tables of hikes organized by area within the mountains;
• current hiking conditions, both in general and for specific trails;
• updates to Jerry Schad's 2000 book Afoot & Afield in Los Angeles County and John Robinson's 1998 book Trails of the Angeles;
• ~25 detailed hike writeups of my hikes;
• links to ~150 external webpages that contain at least some information about specific hikes;
• analysis pages related to hiking such as the accuracy of trail mileages, tables of distances and elevations to various peaks as seen from each other, and information about expected temperatures at various altitudes at various times of year; and
• collections of information related to hiking such as deaths from outdoor activities and a list of all mountain lion attacks in California.

All information on the web related to a given hike (conditions, web links, view plots, places, etc.) is collected on a page devoted to a given hike.

See also a more complete introduction for this site.

Both Websites

Both sites are far from complete, but the two sites each are already significantly larger than a typical guidebook and continue to grow. For comparison, Robinson's and Schad's guidebooks each contain ~0.5 MB of text, and these two sites together contain over 2.0 MB of text just in the pages hosted here. At least another 2.0 MB, and probably much more, is contained in the external pages that are indexed here.

Both sites share the following files. All are found in the About This Site area of the main page for each site, except for the search page which is found at the top of the main pages:

• an Update Log, giving a record of what was added to both sites on a given day;
• a Status of Links page that gives information about links that for some reason are currently not working, as well as those that have been removed because they are no longer available;
• a Search capability of pages hosted here;
• a Abbreviations and Sources page that defines the abbreviations used for phrases and sources of some of the information presented here;
• a Site Access Statistics page, giving information about what pages are accessed most frequently;
• a Definitions page, giving definitions of some words or phrases; and
• a Style Sheet page, containing information about the style for the composition of the pages here. This page is mostly for Jane and myself. One item to note: we have intentionally not formatted our pages to occupy only a portion of a typical screen. We recommend that each reader size their browser window themselves to read the pages more easily.

Both sites have no connection with any company or organization, and result from the personal work of the authors, as well as the volunteer input from many readers credited either on the page with their input or on the acknowledgements page for each site. The referenced links are also mostly the result of volunteer effort by many different webauthors, although a few referenced pages come from commercial efforts. No endorsement of any kind is implied by the existence of a link from these pages, other than our belief that there is some useful information contained within those links.

It is a misconception held by some people that webauthors somehow get a fee for every reader who accesses a webpage. This is true only for some commercial sites supported by advertising. In fact, in most cases, webauthors pay money to put their pages online and make it available to the public. Fortunately, the amount of money for a site like this is small, $275 per year for this site. In comparison, since the page charges for many major scientific journals are ~$100 per printed page, this site would cost ~$20,000, making the dollar costs of a website essentially negligible!

Go to:

• Field Guide to the San Gabriel Mountains
• Hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains
• Table of Contents for all of Tom's webpages.