This hike had a really hard time even getting started. The agenda today called for us to drive up to Pine Mountain Club again, this time to hike the traverse from San Emigdio Mountain west to Brush Mountain, these being located north of Mil Potrero Hwy and opposite the Mt. Pinos ridge we’ve recently hiked twice. San Emigdio Mountain is accessed via a couple of Forest Service roads that are interconnected by several jeep trails – our plan was to drive up to Marian Campground, hike east three miles to San Emigdio’s summit, then backtrack to the campground and hike from there a mile west to Brush Mountain. The only issue was that we didn’t want to take Jane’s van up the steep and narrow dirt road, so we’d have to drive Chris’ less-reliable CRV which, of course, began to overheat Thursday afternoon – Friday night found him replacing the vehicle’s thermostat. After waiting until daylight to verify we had no leaks and deciding that the car would (probably) remain cool, we hit the road a little before 8am. The drive was fairly uneventful, and the CRV indeed remained cool (yay) – the dirt road up to Marian CG was pretty well-graded, but it was steep and rough enough that we were glad to have driven the AWD vehicle and left the van at home. Marian CG is a primitive facility (no water or toilets) sitting at 6,600′ in a saddle atop the ridge – only one of the five sites was occupied, so we parked in a vacant site and hit the trail eastward. The jeep road initially climbed steeply up the ridge (much more steeply than we had expected from the topo map) but, after a few crests and valleys, leveled off after the first half mile. We continued east along the jeep road that was mostly shaded, eventually coming to a junction with the heavier-duty road to San Emigdio Mountain coming up from Apache Saddle – from here, the remainder of the 900′ of elevation gain was at a steady but fairly gentle grade, and views began to improve to the south as the forest became more open. Of course, open forest means less shade, and the temperature got quite warm the higher we went. With temps in the valley forecasted to be in the 100’s, we had expected the day to be a warm one, but Pine Mountain Club was only supposed to be in the upper 70’s, and the intermittent breeze helped cool us off. The road trends eastward but a few hundred yards south of the actual mountain summit, reaching a turnaround at some steep cliffs that form the mountain’s dramatic east face over Cloudburst Canyon. The views from here were awesome – we had expected poor, hazy air quality, but it was actually quite clear. We could see due north into San Emigdio Canyon and Wind Wolves Preserve, and the rocky pyramid of Eagle Rest Peak rose majestically below us to the northeast. We backtracked along the road a couple of hundred yards to the west before wandering north cross-country to find the summit. Initially following an old motorcycle track, we soon realized we were heading down-slope, so we corrected course uphill to the west and found the summit cairn in a little clearing with very limited views. After signing the register, we found our way back south through the woods, reaching the road a quarter mile later without much effort. From here, the hike westward was pretty uninspiring, although the wide path meant we could walk alongside each other and actually converse, which we don’t often have the chance to do when we’re on narrow singletracks. We got back to the campground about 12:30, moved the car to a shadier spot, and immediately moved out west for Brush Mountain – we had yet to eat lunch, not having found a spot that was both in the shade and the breeze (we had found lots of places where it was one or the other). This western jeep road gains nearly all of its 400′ in the first half mile, and we were a little winded by the time we made it to the Brush Mountain summit plateau. Like many of the summits in this area, there are multiple hillocks and outcrops that compete for high point honors – we found what the HPS list reckons as the true summit in a treeless spot with a tiny cluster of stones, and Jane posed for a picture atop the “summit block”. The summit register is located about a quarter mile further north amid a more impressive collection of rocks that is a few feet lower – we quickly covered the remaining distance, found the register, and signed in, wishing our daughter Cassie a happy birthday for the second time today. Jane found a really nice little lunch spot nearby, and we enjoyed the breeze and our sandwiches before returning to the car – on our way back, we could see all five of the area summits we had visited over the last few weeks. We had expected about 8.6 miles total, but the new GPS measured 9.8. It felt great to get back into higher altitudes and away from the poison oak so prevalent on the coast.