Accessing Cascade is easily accomplished by walking the Barrett-Stoddard truck trail 1.6 miles. Canyoneers drop-in at this point and head down-canyon to the San Antonio creek. I once had the pleasure of watching Taco and the Machete Brothers curse and stumble their way through that stretch of wilderness. This time I decided to head upward and hope for the best.
There is actually a decent use path along the banks for a short while.
The use-path can be a challenge to find/follow in one or two spots, and it does become narrow and exposed to about 15 feet or so at one point. Then the canyon turns too rough for a trail and one must plow through the deadfall and foliage.
Appropriately named, this canyon also offers many little falls and cascades to admire.
But I was there for the amazing rock formations which I spied from along the Baldy Road.
The reddish-brown boulders and walls are truly spectacular and plentiful.
The stream disappears and reappears a couple times. Then there is a long stretch of relatively easy dry-bouldering. Some easy class 3 scrambling.
I did an exposed ledge walk along the left side of that.
But then I realized I probably could have gone straight up the fall without too much trouble, given the amount of debris available for holds.
I had the notion of climbing to Peak 6857 (SW of Ontario Peak), but I ran out of time and had to turn around maybe 400 feet from the top.
The side gully was very steep but looked good for a future re-attempt. I detoured a bit to get a nice shot of the cliffs.
On the way down I found a skull.
