"AR Consequences"

3-March 2024: Perhaps it was for that reason that when I awoke, neither Julie nor Tahia wanted to get up as Julie was providing excuses like Tahia having to go to Girl Scouts or that she had some more bookings to make for our upcoming Home Run trip in Summer.

It also didn’t help that it was still raining at home, which got everyone concerned about muddiness on the trail or landslides on the roads leading to the Santa Monica Mountains around Malibu.

This was especially a concern considering how saturated things were after the series of atmospheric river (or AR) storms over the past month…

It was 5:50am when I awoke for good after a couple of snoozes from the alarm.

Today was the day that we would finally do a waterfalling excursion for the first time in the year 2024, which was rather late as far as chasing waterfalls locally, especially on a year with above average rainfall for the season.

Well, speaking of the rainfall, it was strange considering how crazy February was in terms of the intensity and frequency of atmospheric river storms.

And those storms followed a rather dry and cold December and January, where it was starting to look like we would follow up the record-setting precipitation year of 2023 back into the drought pattern.

But I guess Climate Change pretty much turned us into a rather unpredictable, wildly swinging pattern of extremes where it’s all or nothing as far as precipitation is concerned.

At least that was why we didn’t really bother with doing any repeat hikes locally this past Winter until today, and besides, more of the focus was on trying to skill up Tahia so she could better enjoy playing fastpitch softball.

That was something she got a late start on as we didn’t know how much she liked this until late last year during Fall Ball as a last-minute entrant without doing any try outs.

And this meant that she got started at the 12U level where many other girls have at least 2-4 years of experience more by now.

Anyways, the plan was for the whole family along with Mom to go do a hike out to Upper Zuma Falls, which was one of the nicer but more temporary waterfalls flowing in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Mom was supposed to arrive at our place at 7am, and then we’d all carpool together towards Malibu in pursuit of the Upper Zuma Falls.

Pursuing Upper Zuma Falls contrasted with Julie’s preference of re-doing Millard Falls, which I knew would be more crowded and something that we’ve already done too many times in the recent past.

Perhaps it was for that reason that when I awoke, neither Julie nor Tahia wanted to get up as Julie was providing excuses not to go.

Among these excuses were Tahia having to go to a Girl Scouts meeting or that Julie had some more bookings to make for our upcoming Home Run trip in Summer.

It also didn’t help that it was still raining at home, which got everyone concerned about muddiness on the trail or landslides on the roads leading to the Santa Monica Mountains around Malibu.

This was especially a concern considering how saturated things were after the series of atmospheric river (or AR) storms over the past month.

Now, I wasn’t fazed by what the current conditions were in the more inland parts of Los Angeles, because the forecasts had called for clearing skies starting in Malibu before they work their way further inland.

Eventually, Mom showed up at 7:30am, and by that time, it was only going to be me joining Mom on our way to the Backbone Trailhead and the Upper Zuma Falls.

Sure enough, the weather was still raining lightly and drizzling as we left at 7:40am.

Then, we made our way across Los Angeles before ultimately making it to Ventura County where it was still mostly cloudy though it did appear to be clearing as we looked south towards the Santa Monica Mountains from the 101 Freeway.

Speaking of which, we opted not to drive on the I-10 and then onto Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) this time around because landslides from all the saturation from the atmospheric river storms over the past month caused or exacerbated coastal erosion.

Despite the light rain and drizzle along with concerns for muddy conditions on the trail, we ultimately got to the Kanan Rd exit where Mom and I briefly stopped by the gas station there to fill up at 8:35am.

Then, we followed the Kanan Road south along with an entourage of other cars as we passed through a couple of tunnels (labeled T-3 and T-2, respectively) and a few landslide-prone sections, before finally arriving at the Backbone Trailhead at 8:45am.

There were already quite a few cars parked at the lot for the Backbone Trailhead (enough to force us to parallel park on the road shoulder, which a handful of other cars had already done).

I had noticed that there were some pebbles that managed to make it to the exit of the car park, which was indicative of the amount of soil that probably washed down the neighboring slopes and landed on the asphalt.

So Mom and I got geared up, and we quickly used the smelly restroom before getting right onto the familiar Backbone Trail.

While this was essentially a repeat of the same hike that I did nearly a year ago, at least this time around I got to share the experience with Mom.

It would have been nicer had Julie and Tahia come along, but alas it wasn’t meant to be on this day.

Anyways, I was feeling a little rusty wielding the Sony Alpha 3 Mirror Camera since the last time I used it on a hike or for sightseeing was back in late November 2023 when we were in Italy.

Nevertheless, as we made our way down the first switchback as we were approaching the traverse of the creek responsible for the Newton Canyon Falls just downstream, I couldn’t help but notice the blue tank in the distance.

And just below it was the target Upper Zuma Falls, which I didn’t even realize that you could see it (at least partially) from even back at the very start of the Backbone Trail.

As the trail bottomed out in the initial stretch, Mom and I could already tell that the trail surface was a bit on the muddy side though it actually wasn’t all that bad as the potentially slippery parts could easily be avoided.

Down by the creek responsible for Newton Canyon Falls (which was easily audible on this day), we saw once again the National Park Service sign prohibiting off-trail use.

I still remembered back when we first did this waterfall the first couple of times that there was no such sign, and so it wasn’t like it was unsanctioned to get down to the base of that waterfall.

But I think when the National Park Service took over (or at least jointly administered the Santa Monica Mountains with the MCRA), that was when the sign was erected to allow the scrambling trail there to re-vegetate (though I still think people in the know go down there anyway).

Next, the trail ascended alongside what appeared to be some blooms of small whitish flowers along with a few more muddy patches that were definitely a bit more slippery than in the begining.

Not long thereafter, I saw the familiar double-barreled waterfall down in the canyon that can’t seem to be safely reached, but it was certainly making its presence felt with the loud water crashing noise.

Then, the trail proceeded along the ledge beneath the Kanan Road as the trail descended towards the bridge over the stream responsible for that double-barreled waterfall.

Not long before reaching that bridge, we encountered a rather large hiking group that was easily over a dozen people or more, and we wondered if the cars that occupied the trailhead parking spaces were mostly from this entourage.

Just past the bridge, we then entered the familiar burn area, but now instead of a lot of bare vegetation with stark black-barked trees, there seemed to be more greenery on the forest floor in addition to greenery growing on the tops of the black-barked trees.

That kind of shows that at least for these trees, they’re not dead as they probably still have roots tapping into the moisture beneath the surface and bringing water up to the limbs at the tops of the trees allowing for new growth (despite the burns around the trunks at their bases).

Mom noticed that there were some blue skies breaking through the mostly cloudy skies as they continued to clear up even more, and this made for some nice photos with color (though Mom did notice that the phone augmented the colors more so than what her eyes could see).

That once again confirmed that iPhones do lots of real-time image postprocessing, and that line between reality and augmented reality is blurred even more.

Anyways, while in this burn area, at around 9:45am, we started to notice some interesting displays of fungi growing on some cut stumps of dead trees.

I recalled one of the passer-bys that we encountered earlier saying something about the shrooms here, and well, this must have been what they were talking about.

So we took some time checking out this display and taking what macro photos we could before continuing with the next part of the hike.

Speaking of which, the trail pretty much did some mild climbing and then did some very gentle undulations.

The trail at this point was pretty much single-track with some more muddy spots and some shallow standing water in the middle of the trail as well as a couple of minor water crossings.

At this point, there was minimal shade but the skies were still somewhat partly cloudy and the temperatures were rather comfortable.

There were also some intermediate waterfalls in the distance, which I had recalled seeing on my first go of this hike around this time last year.

However, this time, Mom and I stuck to the main trail and didn’t bother with any detours to get a closer look at any of them.

Eventually, we started to get fairly satisfying albeit distant views of the main Upper Zuma Falls from the Backbone Trail, which got us to keep going as the goal was easily in sight.

After a few more turns showing the intermediate waterfalls and knobby hilltops along the way, we then descended towards another minor gully with some rushing stream backed by a very partial view of yet another minor waterfall albeit on the opposite side of the Backbone Trail.

Indeed, flowing water and lots of greenery seemed to be the theme of today’s excursion.

We’d ultimately reach the deviation from the Backbone Trail, where we then went on a narrower path down to a creek crossing.

The initial (and more obvious) crossing looked a bit too deep for our liking even though there seemed to be a couple of small and unsteady-looking rocks to hop on to hopefully get across.

Instead, we found another crossing nearby that was a bit more agreeable with more margin for error, and so with the aid of the trekking poles that I brought, Mom and I were able to get across without much issue.

Once on the other side, we then went over a shrubby hill where once on top of it, we got some more nice views of the Upper Zuma Falls looking tantalizingly close.

Meanwhile, looking in the other direction downstream of the waterfall, we saw the context of the rolling hills of the Santa Monica Mountains against the morning sun while surrounding the Upper Zuma Canyon (if you could call it a canyon at this point).

With all the moisture glistening against the tips of the grasses and shrubs while surrounded by lots of greenery in an area typically dominated by brown, this place definitely felt like it was alive and that Spring was definitely here.

That said, I was cognizant that the Sierras of Central and Northern California’s spine were getting blizzard conditions.

We could already see that there were a handful of people around the bottom of the main tiers of the Upper Zuma Falls, and they made for some nice subjects to convey the scale of this pretty seasonal waterfall.

Actually, I was told prior to my visit last year that this waterfall hadn’t been flowing for many years, and I guess for it to be flowing like this for a second year in a row, I knew that Julie and Tahia definitely missed out on this one.

Who knows if Upper Zuma Falls will flow like this again next year, the year after, or for the foreseeable future?

Anyways, at 10:40am, Mom and I managed to get past some prickly yucca plants protruding onto the narrow use-trail before getting up to an obstructed tree-fronted view of the Upper Zuma Falls around some rocks.

I think with the area still coming off a storm and knowing how slippery and dicey the scramble to continue further up the waterfall was from last year’s experience, this time we were content just to enjoy the falls from this lower vantage point.

While I did do a brief scramble up a slippery rock to get up to a plunge pool beneath the lower of the main drops of the Upper Zuma Falls, I pretty much rejoined Mom and had some tangerines with the obstructed view while also helping a group of ladies take a nice group photo.

They did likewise for us, and we also shared a nicer unobstructed elevated vantage of the Upper Zuma Falls.

After having our fill of this spot, Mom and I headed back down by about 11am, and now we pretty much made the 2-mile return hike without many stops.

As we were heading back along the Backbone Trail, we could see that the skies were definitely clearing up even more, and the temperatures were noticeably increasing for us (probably because we were also moving) so any breeze that we got actually felt good.

There were also quite a few people heading the other way towards the waterfall, which kind of underscored how popular this place was even though it probably had nothing on the crowds you’d get for Escondido Falls nearby.

There even seemed to be some college-aged folks checking out the mushroom bloom that we had seen in the burn area earlier on, including a handful of folks wearing UCLA gear (making me wonder how many of them are students there or from the nearby Pepperdine University).

By about 12:10pm, we finally made it back to the Backbone Trailhead where it seemed like there were just as many cars as there were earlier this morning except the parking orientation for the shoulder area we were at was a little different.

That was because more people were parking on the grass whereas it was largely avoided earlier in the day (maybe due to saturation, who knows?).

Once we got out of our hiking boots and into more comfortable footwear, we then proceeded to drive down the Kanan Road towards PCH so we could enjoy the beach scenery on the way towards the 10 Freeway.

The thinking was that the landslides that might have closed off parts of PCH should affect us on the beach side of PCH.

Aside from a super short traffic light to get onto PCH, we then pretty much cruised the famed curvy coastal road while Mom was busy snapping photos and enjoying the clear weather here.

We passed by the familiar haunts like the many cars parked on both sides of PCH for Escondido Falls, and then passing by Malibu Seafood, and even noticing how dangerously close the beach houses were to the waves.

In fact, I wondered how many of them were affected by the high waves that had hit earlier this year or late last year, and whether they were further responsible for increased beach erosion as all these structures don’t give the sand the ability to move up and down the coast.

I don’t think beaches are meant to be developed in this manner, and that’s probably why many parts of the California coast are losing their beaches, I’d imagine.

Anyways, we’d eventually get onto the familiar 10 freeway after leaving the Santa Monica Pier area (and noticing some huge food and wine tent that I had never seen before), and then heading past the 405 as we went looking to have a late lunch at Versailles for some Cuban food.

We ultimately got there at around 1pm, where the place was still pretty busy but it definitely didn’t have the lines that I remembered they used to have which usually compelled me to order takeout back when I used to live nearby here in West LA.

Well, back then, their famous garlic chicken was less than $6 or $7 (same for the garlic pork or lechon asado), and their chicken and pork combo was less than $10.

Now these days, you’re looking at $18 for the lechon asado, $19 for the garlic chicken, and I think $22 for the combo.

Whatever the case, inflation could definitely be felt here, and it just felt like the prices we paid back then were the good ‘ol days.

The same could be said about the waterfalls we visited in our early days of waterfalling in the 2000s and 2010s before Instagram started the hyper lemmings effect.

Anyways, Mom and I had a satisfying meal of yucca frita, the garlic chicken, garlic pork, and some complimentary bread.

Then, we also got some to go orders to bring home as well as bringing the leftovers home so Dad could try out this food (though I had a feeling he’s pretty indifferent to Cuban food since it’s pretty much Chinese or bust for him).

By about 2:05pm, we left Versailles, and then headed for home, but along the way, I realized that I hadn’t brought my keys (I was driving Mom’s car) and Julie and Tahia were away.

So we had to make a detour to Mom’s place to relax and use their massage chair for a bit before Julie and Tahia finally showed up here at around 4:10pm.

And then an hour later, we finally headed home to call it a night, which certainly felt like a rejuvenation for myself (as well as for Mom) even if I now have more stuff to do to get caught up on today’s happenings.

In a way, it was like getting my muscle memory back as it was time to get back to “work” before our upcoming trips this Spring and Summer…