Anyone who has known me for any length of time has heard the story of the hike gone bad when I was 14. Now that Winter Break is over and we had a non rainy day,
Dan and I decided to revisit the site of this hike he's heard about for over forty years.
I don't remember who I went with the first time I hiked to the creek at the end, but it was some sort of group with adults. They made the mistake of mentioning that the RTD stop was just a block away from the trail head. Well I knew how to take the RTD since we took it to the mall all the time so I told Darlene we should go do this hike together. My mother did not agree. She said we could only go to the mall. So off we went to the mall. We just didn't get off at the mall bus stop.
We found the trail easily.
You can see the whole San Gabriel Valley from the trail.
The trial is very steep with no guard rails.
When Darlene and I were hiking it, we got tired.
We had no idea how far we had gone and after awhile we looked down and saw water flowing along the bottom of a canyon. Well, that looked a lot easier to follow than this really steep hike. Of course it would take us to First Waters if we just followed it.
Fourteen year old thinking here. I'm pretty sure it was all my idea.
But how to get down there????
There was this trajectory sticking into the canyon which looked less steep and so we decided that was the place to go down to the bottom.
It ended up being impossible to walk down so we slid the whole way down.
And then we just followed the water...until we go to this. I will never forget this giant white boulder as long as I live. There was absolutely no way to get around it. It blocked the entire canyon.
Now what? We had to get back to the trail before nightfall because no one knew we were there.
There was only one way back. UP. Up a very steep hill. We climbed it with me pushing her because as scared of heights as I am, she is even more so.
It took a very very long time because we kept slipping backward.
We were beyond filthy when we got back to the top. No way were we going any further on the hike so we headed back to the bus stop. When we got home my mom did not look up from her sewing. If she had, she would have seen us covered in dirt from head to toe.
If we had just stayed on the trail for another 1/2 mile we would have made it to First Waters. It was a tough hike with a 1000 foot elevation change and lots of steep edges.
I knew I would have trouble with my knees on the way down. My knees have no problem in every day life but coming down an incline they can hurt terribly. Luckily, it was only the last half mile this time. And with Dan with me, I can walk backward and then they don't hurt.
We probably won't do this hike again because of the knee issue but it was interesting to go back in time and see how everything is exactly the same as it was almost 50 years ago. Thinking back, that boulder might have saved our lives because who knows where we would have ended up if it hadn't stopped us.
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