The Icehouse Canyon to Icehouse Saddle hike is a 7.2-mile route near Mt. Baldy Village through a tree-lined canyon along a trail parallel to Icehouse Creek. The trail ends at the saddle, where you have the opportunity to continue down about five other routes, including to the popular Cucamonga and Ontario peaks.

“It is a trip which one will want to take more than once when its lure has gotten into the blood,” a Times article from 1926 reads.

Almost 100 years later, this holds true. I have hiked this route numerous times and in every type of weather.

I’ve sat post-hike in the trailhead parking lot with my wife and dog, watching the sun set below the mountains as the humans among us sip hot tea.

I wore crampons for the first time in Icehouse Canyon, crunching through the snow as a friend and I huffed and puffed our way up to the saddle.

I’ve never been wetter than the time my friends and I hiked the canyon in a rainstorm that was supposed to end but didn’t. “Why are we doing this?” my friend Mish kept screaming. We still laugh about that. It was a fair question.

I’ve hiked out in the dark with other solo hikers. Someone invariably forgets their headlamp, but per trail culture, we share light and all make it home safely.

I’ve seen precious chipmunks and been freaked out by bugs that sound like rattlesnakes. And once, when my friend and I were being very quiet, we saw bighorn sheep clomping by, high on a steep hillside.

I have what feels like hundreds of memories of splashing through the creek’s crisp cool waters, whether it was the time I took a cold plunge beneath a short waterfall gushing off a boulder, or all the times I’ve swum with my dog, Maggie May, after a summer hike. The icy waters’ curative powers have soothed my tired feet many times.

After about seven magic miles to the saddle and back, I always feel restored.

Especially these days, I love the chance to visit on a weekday. Mostly alone on the trail, I am safe here. The mountains don’t care that I’m nonbinary and transgender. The chickadees and Steller’s jay will still sing as I walk by, regardless of who I love. The Jeffrey pines will smell great for anyone. Nature continues amid the human-caused chaos, unaware of all the ways we continue hurting each other. It inspires me to keep going too.