Throop Peak is 2,785 meters, 9,138 feet elevation. Blue Sky & Rarified Air.
Throop Peak has also been activated 18 times before, and there are many good reports available. Access from San Fernando Valley, which is where I was staying, is excellent. Access to Throop Peak and many other Angeles National Forest SOTA peaks is via "Highway" 2, the Angeles Crest Highway. This is a very windy, but paved road that very rapidly gains elevation and traverses this area from SW to NE. In fact if you are susceptible to car sickness, this is not the road for you.
The Trail Head to Throop Peak we chose to use was Dawson Saddle at 7,901 feet elevation. We had two (2) vehicles available, our rental car and my son’s car, as he lives in Southern California. That allowed us to do a car shuttle between trail heads and a one way high level traverse up and over Throop Peak, down to the low point between Throop and Mount Baden Powell, over or around two subsidiary points to the summit of Mount Baden Powell, the subject of a separate report. The total hike is about 10½ miles and a little over 2,500 feet elevation gain, including ups and downs along the Pacific Crest Trail. Throop Peak is named after Amos G. Throop, the founder of Throop University in 1891, now known as California Institute of technology (Caltech), where my son is studying and teaching. Throop Peak is the second highest summit in the group which stretches from Vincent Gap to Islip Saddle. This is a beautiful section of the Pacific Crest Trail and the summit offers an impressive 360 degree view, which includes Mt. Baldy and Mt. Baden-Powell (our next objerctive for the day), the Mojave desert, and on clear days, even the Pacific Ocean. We ended the hike at Vincent Gulch Divide at 6,565 feet elevation.
All of my contacts were 2M fm, using my trusty 7 watt Icom IC-V85 hand held + AEA telescoping Hot Rod antenna. I had planned on using 20M ssb on my Yaesu Ft-857D and Inverted V antenna, laboriously carried all the way up and over the Throop Peak / Mount Baden Powell Traverse, but my wife was suffering from high altitude sickness due to lack of acclimatization. For some people, it is difficult to go from sea level to 9,400 feet in 3 hours without suffering occasionally. I have climbed over 14,000 feet many times, and don’t seem to be as affected. Due to my wife’s condition, we only stayed on the summits of Throop Peak and Mount Baden Powell about 40 minutes each. The entire traverse took about 6½ hours car to car.
Thank you very much to all my contacts.
