and Oakwylde.
I picked April 16th because it was the anniversary of Tiburcio Vasquez being chased by lawmen up Dark Canyon in 1874. The infamous bandit had robbed the Repetto ranch in East Los Angeles (now Monterey Park). With the sheriff on his trail, Vasquez made a dash for the Arroyo Seco, robbed more people near Devil's Gate, then raced up the unfinished Soledad Turnpike, which turned into an overgrown mule path at Dark Canyon. At the Tujunga-Arroyo Seco Divide, near the top of Dark Canyon, Vasquez fell off his horse and lost a pistol, before scrambling down to the trail in Big Tujunga. The sheriff's men gave up the pursuit, having lost a horse and nearly one man in a fall. Using his wits, Sheriff Rowland caught Vasquez a few weeks later, while the bandit visited a girlfriend. Vasquez was then hanged in northern California for murder.
We weren't being chased by the law, so we casually strolled down and back up the canyon. Along the way we cleared overgrown brush and sawed downed trees.
The trail is still rough in parts, with easy class 2 scrambling. We cleared a major rockfall spot.
But there are still a couple big slides on the route with scratch trails going over the debris.
There is also this log bridge at one of the crossings.
If you're nimble you can avoid stepping into the creek at all the crossings.
Several years ago I spent time documenting cabin ruins in Dark Canyon. This is probably the best one,
which we call Darkman's cabin, because an unknown person used to fix it up and camp there.
I also spent time looking for the benchmark that appears on this 1939 topo map.
I didn't have any luck until now. One of the guys noticed it on a large boulder.
It has been damaged, and it was downstream from where I thought it should be based on the map. So my guess is that the boulder has been slowly knocking down the creek bed for decades. And only now has the disc become visible again.
