How to Enjoy the Rain in Mount Washington

Is there anything better than being in Mount Washington when it rains?

The greens on the Hill--somber evergreen, silvery eucalyptus, the sharp green of grass--stand out against the gray.  The weather is wilder--both rain and wind--as it ranges over the black walnuts of Heidelberg Park, the flat-top of Kite Hill, the dips and swells of Elyria Canyon, the expanse of Debs Park across the way.

On city streets in the mid-town flats, the rain is a nuisance.  On Mount Washington, it’s a show.

Aside from a surprising number of barely-paved-to-almost-dirt roads on Mount Washington, I think the Hill--and Northeast Los Angeles in general--handles rain well unlike anywhere else. Take, for example, the San Fernando Valley, where wide boulevards turn into ponds with drains-turned-bubbling fountains at every corner. Also, whether on Mount Washington or in Highland Park or the nearby environs, the hills in the rain remind us that it’s not just a nuisance, it’s nature.

That’s not to say there’s no downside to living in Northeast Los Angeles when it rains.

Note to the The Arroyo Seco Parkway National Scenic Byway Project: I love the Arroyo Parkways’s meandering curves, the namesake Arroyo alongside and the Metro chugging overhead like a tree-bordered version of Tomorrowland. (Look!  Trains in the sky!  It’s the future!) But, as last summer’s deadly crash proved, the quaint curves of the West’s first freeway, especially the southbound lanes around Avenue 60 and York, are challenged by regular traffic.  There’s always an accident on the 110 when it rains.

My kids are “scared straight." They know not to drive the Parkway during downpours.

Once, I was inching along that stretch of the Parkway during rush hour traffic in a downpour with four fidgety kids in my car.  There was already a two car wreck at the park-bordered curve and as I accelerated to three mph to move around it, my car hydroplaned right and bounced lightly off the side rail, the momentum sending me back into my original lane where I stopped, heaving sighs of relief for a few minutes.

Until I was rear-ended.

Unable to go anywhere until the traffic ahead moved, I was a captive audience when the young woman who ran into me marched up to the car window talking loudly on her cell phone, paused long enough to announce that it was my fault that she’d rear-ended me, and then, after further consultation with her boyfriend on the other end of the phone, demanded that I give her some money.

Luckily, traffic moved, we exited, and while the kids in the back loudly protested the wait, it only took an hour for the police to convince the young woman that she was at fault. Unluckily, it took less than a day for my insurance company to ascertain that she had no insurance.

That was the last time I used the Parkway during the rain.  Luckily, I know all the surface street detours so I wasn’t concerned when I had to take the Small (and Smelly) Black Dog to Pasadena for a bath in the afternoon.

I was driving over the Parkway on the York overpass on Wednesday when I saw two clouds nestled into the pink of the San Gabriel Mountains. They looked lost as if they’d lagged behind the cloud herd and were following instructions to Stay Put If Lost.

We maneuvered around detour cones and rush hour traffic and stopped at the little park on the boundary of Highland Park and South Pasadena.  Power lines and trees had evidently tangled on the spot.  The lines were down and the trees had been cut up.  The smell of wet wood filled the air.   The SBD was in paroxysms of joy.  He was so happy he would have done somersaults if he could. Instead, he peed everywhere and scratched up exaggerated plumes of wood chips behind him in every direction.

We angled back until I could see the clouds and grab a photo.  As I walked back to the car with the SBD trotting happily alongside, I realized that if I’d been on the freeway, I wouldn’t have been able to maneuver back as quickly to photograph the clouds.

Score one more for the rain.