Arroyo Seco: a semi-urban safari
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2015 8:29 pm
This ended up being a bit long. Sorry.
I like maps and look at them a lot. Maps tell us how our world connects together, without making us go everywhere, but this involves a certain amount of trust. So today I decided to trust, but verify.
As any good LA trip, this one started with a train ride to a hobo trail that led me to the LA river, near the old LA jail. Here I was face to face with the mouth of the Arroyo Seco:
I entered ...
... and very quickly found treasure:
This day was already off to a good start. A bit further upstream, I encountered the first of the day's many waterfalls:
And a bit later, after the sun came up, the first animals were seen:
I kept walking. At some point I popped out of the channel to one of the banks to avoid the Colorado Street dam, that I knew to be a steep pain in the ass from previous explorations. The first major tributary came in a bit later: San Rafael Creek:
After a few miles the Colorado Street bridge came into view:
And the previously-mentioned dam:
Thank you Gray Davis. Past the dam is a soft-bottom section of the arroyo, although the stagnant water really doesn't look very nice.
Then came the Rose Bowl area, full of Pasadena joggers. The channel becomes concrete again here:
I knew it remains a square-sided, fenced-off channel until almost to Devil's Gate dam. Not wanting to be locked in until then, I stayed out, walking along the banks instead. The plan was to stay next to the channel the entire time, but the Rose Bowl golf course people had other ideas. The channel flows down the middle of their fields, and everything is fenced off, without convenient hobo access points, like they have in LA. So I had to walk around, leaving the channel out of my sight for a bit. This would be the perfect opportunity for a prankster map maker to do their thing; I can only hope the channel was indeed where I thought it was.
Past the golf course, I arrived at the 210:
And found a swing set made for people with giant legs but normal torsos:
Devil's Gate dam comes up next, and like the earlier dam, holds back questionable-looking stagnant pools:
The teal stuff is the water. In any case, there isn't much of the wet stuff in the flood plain behind the dam, but there IS a good view of JPL and Brown Mountain:
Underneath the JPL parking lot bridge I found markings for what I assume to be water levels during catastrophic floods. That really puts this drought in perspective; compared to a 10-year flood, we have nothing:
Finally, I made it to the mountains! Above JPL, the Gabrielino is in great shape, and the Arroyo has water in it. I took a break at Gould Mesa, roughly the half-way point. The bypass trail around the Brown Mountain dam is in great shape. And the dam has a nice, little waterfall coming off of it:
Past the dam bypass until Oakwilde, the Arroyo is bone dry, however. The Gabrielino is flagged-out, and the brush cleared here. There's nothing left at Oakwilde, although I didn't look very hard. Above Oakwilde, the water is intermittent, and it's a nice canyon, in general:
The trail is in surprisingly good shape here: people have been working on it. Here I even found some fall colors:
At this point it was about time to look for the alleged junction of the Arroyo Seco and Long Canyon. The Gabrielino follows the latter, but I'm clearly following the former, into Royal Gorge. I walked for a while without finding this junction. Confused, I consulted the GPS, which said that I had missed the junction, but took the correct fork by accident, and I was already in Royal Gorge. I guess that's fine. Royal Gorge is excellent! There was more and more water as I ascended. There are lots of steep sheer cliffs, lots of boulders to hop and pools to admire.
There's also tons of bear scat, and I almost stepped on this guy:
The crux of the trip is in the middle of the Gorge. It's nice waterfall filling a deep pool surrounded by smooth rock. The only possible route for a bypass is on the right. It's not particularly difficult, but it felt a bit unsafe with wet (and slippery) boots. I tried a bigger bypass which turned out to be worse, but by then my shoes dried sufficiently, and I got across the normal way.
Past that waterfall, the going gets easier, and eventually I got to Bear Creek, and Switzer's picnic area. I met some trail workers that were cleaning up the trail to Tom Sloane saddle, so that should be easily passable at some point.
Above Switzer's, I wanted to stay in the creek bed to finish out the main drainage, but daylight was running low, so I took the Gabrielino to Red Box, where my car was sitting. Turns out staying in the creek bed there would be impossible anyway because there were many difficult dams down there:
The Arroyo Seco was dry above Switzer's, and several drainages could claim to be the "main channel". I could see them all from the trail, so I claim going to Red Box was good enough. A good day, overall. It took 11.5 hours to walk 28.7 miles from (almost) downtown LA to see the sun set over the mountains, a red Lawlor and snow.
And the maps of the Arroyo Seco appear to be correct. Except for Long Canyon. That thing is a myth.
I like maps and look at them a lot. Maps tell us how our world connects together, without making us go everywhere, but this involves a certain amount of trust. So today I decided to trust, but verify.
As any good LA trip, this one started with a train ride to a hobo trail that led me to the LA river, near the old LA jail. Here I was face to face with the mouth of the Arroyo Seco:
I entered ...
... and very quickly found treasure:
This day was already off to a good start. A bit further upstream, I encountered the first of the day's many waterfalls:
And a bit later, after the sun came up, the first animals were seen:
I kept walking. At some point I popped out of the channel to one of the banks to avoid the Colorado Street dam, that I knew to be a steep pain in the ass from previous explorations. The first major tributary came in a bit later: San Rafael Creek:
After a few miles the Colorado Street bridge came into view:
And the previously-mentioned dam:
Thank you Gray Davis. Past the dam is a soft-bottom section of the arroyo, although the stagnant water really doesn't look very nice.
Then came the Rose Bowl area, full of Pasadena joggers. The channel becomes concrete again here:
I knew it remains a square-sided, fenced-off channel until almost to Devil's Gate dam. Not wanting to be locked in until then, I stayed out, walking along the banks instead. The plan was to stay next to the channel the entire time, but the Rose Bowl golf course people had other ideas. The channel flows down the middle of their fields, and everything is fenced off, without convenient hobo access points, like they have in LA. So I had to walk around, leaving the channel out of my sight for a bit. This would be the perfect opportunity for a prankster map maker to do their thing; I can only hope the channel was indeed where I thought it was.
Past the golf course, I arrived at the 210:
And found a swing set made for people with giant legs but normal torsos:
Devil's Gate dam comes up next, and like the earlier dam, holds back questionable-looking stagnant pools:
The teal stuff is the water. In any case, there isn't much of the wet stuff in the flood plain behind the dam, but there IS a good view of JPL and Brown Mountain:
Underneath the JPL parking lot bridge I found markings for what I assume to be water levels during catastrophic floods. That really puts this drought in perspective; compared to a 10-year flood, we have nothing:
Finally, I made it to the mountains! Above JPL, the Gabrielino is in great shape, and the Arroyo has water in it. I took a break at Gould Mesa, roughly the half-way point. The bypass trail around the Brown Mountain dam is in great shape. And the dam has a nice, little waterfall coming off of it:
Past the dam bypass until Oakwilde, the Arroyo is bone dry, however. The Gabrielino is flagged-out, and the brush cleared here. There's nothing left at Oakwilde, although I didn't look very hard. Above Oakwilde, the water is intermittent, and it's a nice canyon, in general:
The trail is in surprisingly good shape here: people have been working on it. Here I even found some fall colors:
At this point it was about time to look for the alleged junction of the Arroyo Seco and Long Canyon. The Gabrielino follows the latter, but I'm clearly following the former, into Royal Gorge. I walked for a while without finding this junction. Confused, I consulted the GPS, which said that I had missed the junction, but took the correct fork by accident, and I was already in Royal Gorge. I guess that's fine. Royal Gorge is excellent! There was more and more water as I ascended. There are lots of steep sheer cliffs, lots of boulders to hop and pools to admire.
There's also tons of bear scat, and I almost stepped on this guy:
The crux of the trip is in the middle of the Gorge. It's nice waterfall filling a deep pool surrounded by smooth rock. The only possible route for a bypass is on the right. It's not particularly difficult, but it felt a bit unsafe with wet (and slippery) boots. I tried a bigger bypass which turned out to be worse, but by then my shoes dried sufficiently, and I got across the normal way.
Past that waterfall, the going gets easier, and eventually I got to Bear Creek, and Switzer's picnic area. I met some trail workers that were cleaning up the trail to Tom Sloane saddle, so that should be easily passable at some point.
Above Switzer's, I wanted to stay in the creek bed to finish out the main drainage, but daylight was running low, so I took the Gabrielino to Red Box, where my car was sitting. Turns out staying in the creek bed there would be impossible anyway because there were many difficult dams down there:
The Arroyo Seco was dry above Switzer's, and several drainages could claim to be the "main channel". I could see them all from the trail, so I claim going to Red Box was good enough. A good day, overall. It took 11.5 hours to walk 28.7 miles from (almost) downtown LA to see the sun set over the mountains, a red Lawlor and snow.
And the maps of the Arroyo Seco appear to be correct. Except for Long Canyon. That thing is a myth.
everyone who did that to the river should be burned alive. its a crime against nature. -of course so is all of LA, so wtf, i guess you who live there think its normal...uhg, so gross, i never shoulda looked at this forum again. too depressing.