Since our first hike of 2012 ended up being so snowy and icy, we decided to stick to the lower San Gabriels for our second hike.

We decided to do a classic hike in our ‘backyard’ to the top of Echo Mountain. If we had more time, we would have liked to continue on to Inspiration point (see Modern Hiker’s descriptive write-up), but we only had a couple hours.

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The hike was a great workout with 1400 ft of gain, and at the top of Echo we got to explore the ruins of an old mountain resort that was accessible by a very steep railroad in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

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This was the first time we really got to appreciate living in Pasadena and being so close to some local trails. It only took about 10 minutes to get to the trailhead, which was really nice since we had so little time. Once daylight savings begins, I’m hoping we can even do some hiking on the weeknights every now and then.

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