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Preface to the Eighth Edition

In 1970 I wrote to Tom Winnett, founder of Wilderness Press. Tom had just published Sierra North and Sierra South, hiking guides to California’s mighty Sierra Nevada. I asked Tom if Wilderness Press might be interested in a guidebook to the trails of the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California. Tom enthusiastically approved of my project, and a year later, the first edition of Trails of the Angeles appeared.

Over the next three decades, Trails of the Angeles continued to be a favorite of Southern California hikers, much to my gratification. These were years of strenuous work to keep the guidebook up-to-date. Unlike a novel or most works of nonfiction, a guidebook is never completed. Change is constantly taking place, caused by a number of factors: fire, flood, abandoning of old trails and campgrounds, building of new ones, objections from private property owners whose land a road or trail may cross, and new US Forest Service regulations. Underlying many of these issues is the fact that the San Gabriels rise next door to one of the major population centers on the continent, which results in swarms of people using—and often overusing—these mountains.

Still, it was a labor of love on my part. Countless weekends were spent doing what I enjoy the most: tramping over old trails, checking out realigned or new ones, and meeting new friends.

Now, mainly because of advancing age, the time has come to relinquish work on Trails of the Angeles. My successor is a young, energetic hiker I met on the Mount Wilson Trail several years ago, Doug Christiansen of Sierra Madre. Doug is an airline pilot by profession who spends many of his free days rambling over the mountains that rise abruptly above his home. I’ve hiked with Doug many times in the past year and am convinced that he is the right man for the job.

I offer a fond farewell to my many mountain hiking friends of years gone by. May you continue to enjoy walking the footpaths of the splendid mountain country of the San Gabriels.

John W. Robinson

Fullerton, California

January 2005