* ACA Rating: 3BII
* Our hiking time: 4 hours
* Our Hiking distance: 3.5 miles(est)
* Elevation loss: 1370ft
* Elevation gain: 1140ft
* Required equipment: Standard canyoneering gear 150ft rope, 150ft pull cord, 100ft webbing 4 quicklinks
* Rappels: 2-4 largest 150ft
Acme Mapper
See attached ZIP for Google Earth KMZ
Elevation profile
General description:
This hidden gem is to the west of Lucas Canyon dropping off Angeles Forest Highway at the entrance to the long abandoned fire camp number five. I have wondered about this canyon for a year or two now and figured it would make a nice 100th canyon!
Trailhead*:
This trip requires a shuttle leaving a vehicle at the exit for Fall Creek, drive up to Angeles Forest Highway and turn left in roughly 3/10th of a mile there is a large paved turnout. This is the trailhead. Roughly mile marker 20.83 (estimated)
The Trip:
After dropping our shuttle vehicle off and driving to the trailhead we wondered what the heck is all this traffic? Long lines of cars, humm mighty strange are you sure today is Saturday? It finally dawned on us that Highway 14 & others are closed due to the Sayer Fire, great! This will be the most dangerous part of the trip! Crossing the highway.
We started moving @ 7:07 am across AFH, picked a likely spot and proceeded down. We rapidly descended the loose embankment to the canyon bottom. We where expecting a bushwhack of epic proportions and where greeted with an open Oak shaded stroll! Wow what luck We made good time, tension building as the canyon starts to get more and more narrow twisting and turning, seeing the opposite wall of Big Tujunga through the trees we came to the first rappel @ 2866ft on my GPS 7:53 am.
I was hoping for a 200ft+ rappel but this 150ft will do nicely. After some consideration we anchored on a bomber tree canyon left well back from the edge using 60ft of webbing, we brought my 350ft 11mm which I deployed over the edge after anchoring myself with my handled ascender to the rope right near the edge. Once the first person was down we pulled up the rope until it reached double which was just past the 150ft mark. Bernd was next, I went last. The pull was a bit difficult because of the weight of the 11mm and the way it hung. This would be an excellent spot for a guided rappel. Canyoneers with ropes tied together might want to move the knot near the edge for the last man down.
Below here we scrambled down several places, the next rappel might be optional for some, we anchored on a tree canyon right, below here after some scrambling is a 60ft rappel, we anchored on a small but stout Big Cone Douglas Fir canyon left. Shortly below here is another optional rappel for some of about 20ft we anchored in the creek bed on a log. Shortly below here at 9:17 am we met Big Tujunga Canyon, we discussed doing Fall Creek, but I wanted to check out some drop-in points for future adventures so we proceeded down canyon to Fall Creek Road which we arrived at, at 9:36 am now for the FUN! Part hiking up that darn road to our shuttle vehicle OH BOY this would normally take about ½ hour but we stopped many times to see the sights and plan some future adventures. We got to the Shuttle vehicle at 10:47 am and arrived at the drop-in @ 11:00 am after yet another detour to check another potential canyoneering adventure
A great trip all in all and a cool 100th canyon Big Tujunga is the canyon that just keeps on giving!
*Due to repeated auto burglaries at all Big-T trailheads it is highly recommended you not leave anything in your vehicle, not in the trunk or anywhere else, leave the windows down too...Oh the joys of urban canyoneering!
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