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Welcome to The Wild. Winter is an ideal time to explore the close-to-home front range of the Angeles National Forest. Josephine Peak would be a good place to start. It’s not particularly high, at 5,558 feet, but it offers spectacular views of Los Angeles, which can look like the Emerald City of Oz rising in the distance. Turning north toward the forest, you’ll see a vast quilt of canyons and high points in the San Gabriels, most prominent Strawberry Peak.
One of the oddest items on top: Open-air green shelves where hikers have left mementos such as a Yosemite cap, sunscreen, notes, rocks and even a dollar or two. It’s a remnant of a fire lookout that stood from 1937 until it burned down in the Big Tujunga Canyon fire in 1975. I always wondered who Josephine was. The local Sierra Club’s Hundred Peaks Section says a U.S. Geological Survey surveyor named the peak after his wife, Josephine Lippencott. No word on whether