Yesterday I had the pleasure of bushwhacking up San Dimas Canyon with Mr. Enrique Polanco. And by bushwhacking, I mean bushwhacking. Half of the trip was spent slogging through branches over the creek or just in the way. The other half was on game trails that had seen light use by people. All in all, a quint little trip.
We started maybe half a linear mile down from San Dimas Reservoir, and dropped in to the creek, heading roughly NE. Our initial attempts to follow the creek were subdued by the aforementioned branches, so we picked our way across scattered trails, finding half the cleaned remains of some animal (I think it was a rabbit, Enrique is convinced it was a dinosaur). We came to the confluence of both a side creek, and the main creek (research shows the actual name for the watershed in SD Canyon is San Dimas River), and in the middle of this expanse was a sign. Upon closer inspection we discovered that any writing on this sign had long since disappeared however, there were the remains of shattered beer bottles at the base of the sign, possibly thrown on anger at the immense let down hikers experienced upon meeting this blank monolith, an anger that was felt by my hiking partner and myself.
After deciding to head up the side creek, into the lesser canyon, we marched off on a small trail that followed the dry creek bed in a more northerly direction until we crossed the creek, now with a slow flowing of icy cold mountain water. On a small bluff we stopped and had lunch, planned our next move, and found cell reception. It is worth noting that while i was gathering water, Enrique heard a sheep and was determined to find it and befriend it.
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| Here I made Oriental Ramen, and filtered water with my Christmas present |
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| View from our lunch spot |
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| Hobo shanty...not really |
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| A warning to those who drink Sprite |
After we packed up, we headed deeper into the canyon, searching for faint trails to lead us to new discoveries Most of these discoveries were beer containers, usually of the bland, inexpensive variety. After hiking again through branches, and crossing the creek several more times, we eventually ran out of trail and traversable land and had to turn around. And therein lay a problem. Getting back to the confluence was no problem, for we had a small trail we had followed up into the canyon. But because the confluence is just that, a meeting of two water sources, and trails that are made are washed out during the rainy season. So we wound up a bit farther off of our track, and made our final discovery: a long abandoned hobo shanty. Ok, not really, just a couple of boards leaning up against a jutting rock. But for those few moments when we thought it was the "door" to some boxcar riding drifters home, we were excited. Like all the things that initially seemed cool, this was a letdown. Only the trail itself, with its constant changing and new revelations, kept our awe and attention.
We had a nasty time fighting through our dearest friend, branches, to get to a spot on the creek we could get up on to the main road. Which is where we saw the car, not more than 50 yards away. Thing is, down in the creek, that whole trek from the car to where we left the creek took 20 minutes. Go figure.
