A Calendar Round on Mt. Baldy 

Los Angeles, with Mount Baldy - photo Alek Leckszas 

(licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license) 

A Calendar Round on Mt. Baldy

by Ron Bartell and Christine Mitchell, November 2025

Christine Mitchell and I recently completed a many-years-long goal to summit Mt. Baldy (official name: Mount San Antonio) every calendar date of the year.

At 10,064’ (3069 meters), with a prominence of 6290’ (1918 meters), Mt. Baldy is one of three Ultras in Southern California.  The peak is a very popular hike year-round, with hundreds of people summitting on summer weekends.  Even in sunny Southern California its upper 600 meters are usually snow-covered in the winter, when it can be a mountaineering challenge.  It’s about a 90-minute drive from our home to our favorite trailhead at 6,200’ (1890 meters).

I first climbed Mt. Baldy in 1977 and I took Christine for her first summit in 1985, five weeks after our first date.  Baldy became our go-to hike if we weren’t going to the Sierra or the desert and wanted to get a workout closer to home.

In 2005, we completed the Colorado 14ers List and we needed a new objective.  We knew about local climber Sid Davis’ accomplishment of climbing Mt. San Jacinto (one of the other local ultras) every calendar date of the year.  He completed this feat on October 9 in 1982 on his 588th ascent of the peak, the only date he hadn’t climbed it.  Christine suggested we start a Baldy every-date-of-the-year project, since we were already partway there.  I was leery of this but I checked my records to see how our Baldy summit dates landed on the calendar.  I had 123 ascents and Christine had 85.  And, more importantly, only about 10 of the dates were repeats so that was enough incentive.  Game on!

I was skeptical of ever pulling this off, but whenever we felt the urge to climb Baldy we would dutifully check our records and pick a date that we hadn’t climbed before.  We were both retired so by shifting a day or two we could usually find a date we “needed”, but weekends were preferable since the Baldy ski lift runs on weekends year-round so we could ride the lift down to save our knees 1500’ of downhill.  We ended up riding the lift down about 275 times overall.

Christine was taking a print-making class at the time and had an assignment to create and print a silk screen design.  She decided to put her print on a T-shirt.  She designed a screen with “Got Baldy” and a photo of the peak for the front, and a grid of all dates of the year for the back.  She made a shirt for each of us and then we marked off the dates as we summitted on them.

Hiking trails reach the summit of Mt. Baldy from four sides of the mountain.  Most of our climbs were via the popular Ski Hut trail, which is 4.2 miles long with 3900’ gain.  In non-snow conditions, we followed this trail all the way to the summit.  If there was snow in good condition, we would go up Baldy Bowl from just beyond the Ski Hut, usually without crampons, kicking steps and using ice axes.  Our usual snow route was up the right side of the bowl but occasionally we’d go straight up one of the central chutes.  The best part of a snow climb was glissading on the descent!

The oldest trail on the mountain is the Mt. Baldy Trail which starts in Baldy Village and goes through Bear Flats for almost 6000’ gain.  We’ve ascended this route about a dozen times.  We also climbed the North Backbone Trail from Blue Ridge on the north side a few times and the Register Ridge trail many times.  The first time I ascended the Register Ridge trail in 1999 there was no real trail, just a couple of short sections of bighorn tracks.  With the increasing popularity of Baldy, especially since COVID, that route has become a well-defined use-trail all the way.  On one occasion we descended west from the summit, down the ridge to Big Iron and on down to Heaton Flat.

Twice there were two days in a row where I needed one date and Christine needed the other.  The procedure for these dates was to backpack to a little basin south of the summit at 9600’ on need-date one.  Whoever “needed” that date would continue and tag the summit while the other set up camp.  The next morning the other would go to the top.  We slept on the summit once, to watch a meteor shower, but there was too much light from Los Angeles for good viewing.

In our youth, we considered riding the ski lift UP to be cheating - that’s for descents only!  But as we’ve aged, some days the idea of a 4000’ ascent is just too daunting.  So occasionally we have resorted to riding the ski lift up to the Notch and then hiking the Devil’s Backbone Trail to the summit – only 2300’ gain.  Borrowing a concept from the Carbon Exchange Program, I rationalize that the effort we’ve expended on our two dozen failures, when we always got at least to the Ski Hut, can be traded for the ride.  So, off-setting with our failure efforts, we still averaged over 4000’ gain per summit.

Climbing Baldy so frequently, we came to recognize other Baldy poly-baggers.  Brent Newell has over 1000 ascents; Kevin Lee has averaged about 50 ascents per year for years, and continues to do so; the late Sammy Seuk Doo Kim climbed the mountain over 700 times, including over 200 days in a row; the late 'Ranger Dan' had 1621 ascents before he died in 2023.  The Super Hiking Twins (see Facebook or Instagram) recently logged their 100th ascent.  Achieving this milestone while they were 10 years old was their goal and they made it by 3 months.  I’m sure there are many more Baldy addicts.

Ten years ago, as the climb got harder (or, as we got older?), I had moments when I thought “How can we drag ourselves up this hill 100 more times?”.  But we kept at it, averaging about 20 ascents per year for the next few years.  By 2022 we had only 20 “need" dates left, but most of them were in winter.  Now we were in our 70s and snow climbs were much more tiring than they used to be.  Also, if a storm came in on a date we needed, we had to wait a year for another shot at that date.  And every year counts when you’re over 70.  Our chances of doing these 20 specific winter dates without any of them getting delayed for years due to storms seemed slim.  But some relatively mild winters and the increased popularity of Baldy after COVID helped.  So many people were now hiking the peak in winter that a day or two after a storm there was usually an excellent track beaten into the snow.  Often, we could just walk up the snow trough, sometimes wearing instep crampons, without breaking trail at all.

Finally, after bagging Baldy on April 9, 2025, we had only one calendar date left: September 27.  To add some drama to this saga, Christine had total knee replacements on both knees: the first on April 11, and the second on June 19.  We wondered if she could hike just three months after the second replacement.  Fortunately, Sep 27, 2025 was a Saturday and the ski lift would be running, so she could ride the lift partway up, but we still weren’t sure if her new knees would be up for it so soon.  Her recovery and conditioning went well and she was ready to give it a shot.  A dozen people joined us for the hike - some rode the lift up with Christine, some hiked via the Ski Hut trail with me.  The weather forecast for that date added a final bit of drama to the occasion, with a chance of thunderstorms predicted.  The weather gods smiled; the knee demons went on holiday, and we tagged the summit under gloomy skies and had a celebration 500’ below the summit, hopefully out of T-storm range (no storm materialized).

Now we need a new goal…  But don’t tell Christine.  I can’t take any more of her “great” ideas.