Jerry Pilson

I am sure there is a difficult / strenuous and reasonable safe route through the large boulder area approaching the White Mountain Peak.   I don’t know for sure, because that is not the route I ended up taking.  I lost the trail in the boulders and ended up going back and forth across the trail before finally getting past to the top and back on the trail.  It was all my fault, but the route I took was very difficult and totally unsafe.  The official description of White Mountain is below:

It is a long way to the top

After the top, I went down to the East Camino Cielo road and ended my 9 hour hike

This was my path through the critical boulder area; NOT RECOMENDED!

The tunnel trailhead

The first 3/4 mile is on an abondaded road, with the peak above

The road soon turns into a trail...

…a rocky trail….

…but with secure footing

After turning off the main trail, and scrambling through a 1/2 mile of thick brush, you can see the final path to the top ridge which allows you to reach the path to White mountain

It does not look nearly as bad as it actually was

There is no way around, you have to go over

I did not take any pictures of the dangerous areas, because I was to busy holding on

There were good views of Santa Barbara...

…and the channel islands

Truefully, I was not kidding about the next section looking easy

There was a path through this mess...

…it was easier, but not easy

My path was not THE actual trail

Looking back

The little blue dot is actually the exit of the rock cave that gave access to the actual trail to the mountain

And after almost 8 hours...

I actually made it to the top

I ended the hike with a short hike down to East Camino Cielo

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