To ride on well constructed bridle roads up mountain slopes, winding in and out on diversified paths, through and by bowers of fragrant trees, shrubs and flowers, looking up through towering pines to majestic cliffs and ponderous rocks, looking down into the depths of vast canyons, where deer find shady coverts, and looking out upon scenes of perfect beauty and sublimity—these things fill the body with vigor and buoyant enthusiasm, and the mind with lasting pictures of increasing interest.
On the Bridle Roads of the Mount Lowe "8."
The Phantom Sea in the Sierra Madre.
Realizing this Professor Lowe early had constructed more than thirty miles of wide and easy-graded bridle roads radiating from Alpine Tavern to all the higher peaks and summits of the range. The most important sections of these roads are known as the "Mount Lowe Eight," for, in making the complete ride to the summit of Mount Lowe from Echo Mountain and return, the figure "8" is described, the rider crossing his own path in one place only, and nowhere else riding twice on the same road.
[The Phantom Sea As Seen from Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe.]
One of the most exquisitely beautiful sights ever witnessed is when a low fog covers the San Gabriel Valley. This fog never rises above a level of about 2,700 to 3,000 feet, and when one is on Echo Mountain, 3,500 feet in elevation, the upper surface of this fog is spread out "like a phantom sea" below. The "cities of the plain" are covered with this snow-white or creamy pall. Underneath is partial gloom and dampness. Above, the sun shines upon a silent sea, whose waves are tossing and lifting, swaying and waving, until finally—generally between 8.30 and 9.30 in the morning—the heat, in dissipating the glowing white ocean, builds fantastic and mysterious forms on its surface, and draws them upwards to rapidly swallow them up and make them disappear in its warm embrace. Such a sight stirs the soul to its greatest depths, and suggests thoughts sublime and soul-uplifting.