My California - Camp Guffy

derekrichardson (67)adminin SoCal Steemit • last year

For this weeks Show Us Your California contest by @socalsteemit I head up into the San Gabriel mountains for an overnight trip to...

Camp Guffy!!

Camp Guffy is a small campground that sits at 8300' high up on the crest of Blue Ridge. Overlooking Wrightwood to the north and the Sheep Mountain wilderness area to the south. To get there you gotta take the Angeles Crest highway to Inspiration point. From there you take Blue Ridge road, which is a fairly well maintained dirt road, for about 6 miles and then you will arrive at Camp Guffy. The campground is pretty small, only six campsites, and it is free and non-reservable. So my two uncles headed up there early in the morning and made sure to get us a site. Then they went out and did some hiking up on nearby Pine Mountain. My cousin and I headed up later in the afternoon and met my uncles at the campsite just after they got back from their hike. We unpacked our stuff and I got my hammock hung up and ready to go and then my cousin and I decided to take a short hike ourselves and so we hiked down off the north side of the ridge to a beautiful little natural springs where fresh delicious water comes right out of the mountainside. The area around the spring was green and lush and had several different types of blooming wildflowers. Also there is an interesting old cabin there that we checked out before heading back up to camp. Back up at camp we got the campfire going and grilled up some dinner and then spent the rest of the evening just hanging out, chatting it up, and burning through our pile of firewood.

Driving out Blue Ridge road

Arriving at Camp Guffy

Hammock setup

Overlooking Wrightwood

Hiking down to the springs

Fresh spring water

The meadow around the springs

Me inside the old cabin

Old wooden barrel in the meadow

Blooming wildflowers

Another shot of the old cabin

Grilling up some dinner

Sunset views

The next morning we woke up, had some breakfast, and then packed up our camp. Once we were all packed up we headed out for a morning hike up to the top of Wright mountain which has some excellent views looking north over Wrightwood and out over the High Desert. Along the hike I found a few nice little pieces of Actinolite which added to the fun. If I had more time I probably would have spent some time up there rockhounding, but my uncles had things to do. So after the hike we called it a day and made the drive back out the dirt road and back home down the mountain.