Nabii Jamaael, of Hollywood, runs along the newly opened portion of the Gabrielino Trail in the Angeles National Forest on Friday, August 24, 2018. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups that helped rebuild the trail Gabrielino Trail in the Angeles National Forest hike the open trail on Friday, August 24, 2018. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Sound The gallery will resume in seconds

Steve Messer helps open a portion of the Gabrielino Trail in the Angeles National Forest on Friday, August 24, 2018. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire and Messer, of Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association, helped rebuild the trail which follows the Arroyo Seco seen behind him. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Steve Messer places a trail sticker on the newly opened portion of the Gabrielino Trail in the Angeles National Forest on Friday, August 24, 2018. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire and Messer, of Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association, helped rebuild the trail. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Chun Mi, left, and her sister Julie Yi, of San Gabriel, hike the Gabrielino Trail from Switzer’s on Friday, August 24, 2018. Members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups helped rebuild a portion of the trail in the Angeles National Forest that had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)



The Gabrielino Trail is completely open on Friday, August 24, 2018 after members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups helped rebuild the trail in the Angeles National Forest. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

The Gabrielino Trail is completely open on Friday, August 24, 2018 after members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups helped rebuild the trail in the Angeles National Forest. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

The Gabrielino Trail is completely open on Friday, August 24, 2018 after members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups helped rebuild the trail in the Angeles National Forest by rebuilding historical sections with rock. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Jeffrey Vail, Forest Supervisor for the Angeles National Forest and San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, takes pictures along the Gabrielino Trail as it opens on Friday, August 24, 2018. Members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups rebuilt a portion of the trail closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Tae Lee and Sung Park, of Korea Town, take a rest while hiking the Gabrielino Trail from SwitzerÕs on Friday, August 24, 2018. Members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups helped rebuild a portion of the trail in the Angeles National Forest that had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)



The Gabrielino Trail is completely open on Friday, August 24, 2018 after members of the Forest Service and volunteer groups helped rebuild the trail in the Angeles National Forest. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

Steve Messer takes down the Gabrielino Trail closed sign with members of the Forest Service, including Forest Sup. Jeffrey Vail, third from left, and volunteer groups that helped rebuild the trail in the Angeles National Forest on Friday, August 24, 2018. The portion of the trail at Bear Canyon Trail junction had been closed since the Station Fire. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

On a narrow, single-track portion of the Gabrielino Trail, a team of trailbuilders on Friday yanked the closed sign from the rocky ground, replacing it with a “trail open” marker, re-establishing for the first time in nearly a decade a connection from the front range to back country mountains of the western Angeles National Forest.

No one was happier to celebrate the reopening of the famous trail than Robin and Mike McGuire, a husband and wife duo who logged 109 volunteer hours as part of a massive restoration effort led by the Mt. Wilson Bicycling Association, Concerned Off-Road Bicyclist Association and the U.S. Forest Service, with $25,000 donated from REI sporting goods stores and $15,000 from local utility Southern California Edison. “It was a labor of love,” said Robin, 66, who lives with her husband in La Crescenta. “We worked our butts off.”

Damaged by the Station Fire, a 160,000-acre blaze set by an arsonist that remains the largest fire in Los Angeles County, the closure of a 10-mile stretch of the 26-mile horseshoe-shaped trail was one of the more significant lingering effects of the fire, which started nine years ago Sunday.

Almost immediately after it was set, the fire took the lives of two firefighters: Capt. Tedmund Hall and firefighter specialist Arnie Quinones, when a wall of flames obscured their view, causing their truck to slide down a gully. Damage to homes, wildlands and a strained trail system was monumental, exacerbated by winter rains that brought flooding and mudslides undermining the path and toppling giant trees blocking access.

The groups had worked on 19 trails damaged by the fire, with the Gabrielino the last one restored. Members took turns clearing brush and shoring up the one-time Native American trading route snaking through the Arroyo Seco and Bear canyons from Chantry Flat above Arcadia to Pasadena/Altadena to Switzer’s Trail Camp located off scenic Angeles Crest Highway north of La Cañada Flintridge.

“Mike had to chainsaw hundreds of trees himself,” Robin said. “We pulled the equipment, such as chainsaws and Pulaskis (a kind of ax), on BOB trailers hooked to our bicycles. It was a single bike pulling 35 pounds of equipment.”

The efforts took more than two years, using 102 volunteers, 1,900 hours and 283 volunteer days. The free labor is worth about $60,000.

“It is such a valuable resource for Pasadena and the surrounding communities,” said Jeff Vail, supervisor of the Angeles National Forest. “There is a lot of history to it.”

Native Americans, called Gabrielinos by the Spanish but later identifying as Tongva, would scavenge for food and hunt animals in the Angeles during warmer months, then trade with the Chumash of Ventura County along the route.

Commodore Perry Switzer, one of the many pioneers of the “Great Hiking Era” of the 1880s to 1930s, built a camp and a chapel. The camp, along with Thaddeus S.C. Lowe’s railway to the sky, brought thousands to the Arroyo Seco Canyon and San Gabriel Mountains.

The closure left a younger generation unable to reach Switzer Falls, Red Box and other sites via the trail from the bottom, which offered a mostly flat hike through shaded groves and meandering, year-round streams.

“The closing has deprived people of this beautiful canyon,” said Tim Brick, managing director of the Arroyo Seco Foundation. “I remember what a joy it is to walk from Hahamongna (Watershed Park in northwest Pasadena) to Switzers. Yet, when I talk to young hikers they don’t know the Arroyo Seco.”

In 1970, the trail was the first in Southern California designated as part of the National Trails System, which began in 1968. The Gabrielino joined the Iditarod trail in Alaska and the Lewis and Clark trail in Oregon and Washington.

Hunter Wang and Nabii Jamaael, both from Hollywood, ran the trail for the first time on Friday as part of a training regimen for a future 10k obstacle course race in Big Bear. They were surprised to learn the trail went all the way to Pasadena. “Oh, we have to go back and get our car,” said Jamaael, who was parked at Switzer’s Picnic Area.

The president of CORBA, Steve Messer, has been fixing trails for decades This was the first trail he ever rode on a mountain bike, he said, more than 32 years ago. “It has a pretty warm place in my heart,” he said.

A ceremony marking the opening is from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 2 at Loma Alta Park, 3330 Lincoln Ave., Altadena.