18-February 2023: In this instance, we now had to scoot and slide our way down to trying to find some footholds, which were pretty much blind as it was hard to see where they were as we were going down.

Julie had the most difficulty making her way down while Tahia seemed to make it down no problem though she too took quite a bit of time to figure out how best to go without falling into the water.

When it came my turn, Julie helped me to place my feet on the footholds as I was blindly going down backwards…

I awoke at 7:30am thinking that Julie needed to go to the 8am Farmer’s Market so I had some time to sleep in and perhaps try to shake off a rather persistent cold that Tahia gave us since last weekend.

It was the same virus (or whatever bug it was) that forced us to cancel a President’s Day holiday at Magic Mountain, which meant that I wasted a day off work.

That said, it wasn’t all for naught as I did do a couple of hikes on my own to salvage something out of it).

Anyways, when I confirmed with Julie if we were going to do a hike today, she confirmed it, and then I wasted no time in getting ready while also playfully trying to get Tahia up out of bed.

I think the promise of Roblox time was what got her out of bed as well as spending time in Little Armenia with Auntie Mary (since we had to deliver Girl Scout Cookies to her).

In any case, it still took some time for us to get ready, and I guess Julie took too much time to get ready so she ended up not doing the Farmer’s Market on this day, anyways.

Thus, we probably didn’t need to dilly dally as long as we did, but regardless, we got into the car and headed out by 8:20am, which was pretty much par for the course as far as the local waterfall hikes we’ve been doing this year so far.

In any case, the traffic was relatively light until we got to the 405 and 10 interchange, where there always seemed to be congestion there.

It felt like that section alone took the majority of the drive, but once we got past that, we then got back on the familiar PCH under a rather gray day (it felt like June Gloom or May Gray, except this was still mid-February).

Soon enough, we got to Sunset Blvd, and then we hung a left onto Palisades Drive, where we then went through an interesting canyon amongst some rather well-off neighborhoods.

The canyon itself seemed like it was mudslide-prone, and I wondered if any of the crumbling cliffs caused issues not just here but also closer to PCH since some of the sandstone cliffs butted right up against PCH with no netting or preventative measures in place.

Eventually at 9:20am, we arrived at the familiar street parking close by a couple of exclusive community gates adjacent to the Topanga State Park entrance.

As expected, there were already some people getting started with the hike though the parking situation wasn’t as crowded as I would have expected for this late on a Saturday morning.

Anyways, after a few minutes, we all geared up (this time I went in Trail Runners thinking that I might be getting my feet wet), and we then proceeded onto the familiar hike.

After getting through the fencing and down the steps, we then got onto a bit of a concrete slope though the round concrete steps were apparently gone now.

The family that went in front of us actually went the wrong way (i.e. up the concrete slope) while we kept straight ahead.

I guess this hike was a little bit of a choose-your-own-adventure because there were indeed a lot of false trails and it wasn’t all that well-signed.

But we knew from the past to stay close to the creek though we did stray onto one of the more inland higher paths that were probably there to avoid the stream bank paths that might be inundated in high water.

We then passed by a familiar “cave”-like area where there seemed to be a slab of cliff leaning and fused against a larger cliff (though there was a bit of tagging that happened there).

Further along the way, we also saw some interesting formations crowning the canyon on either side of us.

It didn’t take long before we got to the junction between the Trippet Ranch Trail (via Santa Ynez Trail) and the Waterfall Trail, and then we veered to the right, where we then dropped into the creek for a few more crossings.

Actually, thus far, the hike didn’t seem nearly as dicey nor as difficult as the first time around, and I attribute that to perhaps the creek having a bit less flow than on our first time back in January 2019.

Nevertheless, there were a few steep embankments we had to climb up and down, but it felt like this time around, the hike went quite a bit faster than before, and it felt like we really didn’t need to get our feet wet.

Eventually at 10:20am, we got to the familiar part of the hike where there was a sign that would have said something about the end of the maintained trail, but now that sign was pretty much bare and all tagged up.

From this point forward, it was pretty much rock hopping and bouldering all the way up to the Santa Ynez Falls, but we were still able to keep our feet dry pretty much throughout this stretch.

There was one particular obstacle to get past a small waterfall obstacle where we had to cling to a small cliff face with some footholds to climb up, but we knew that going down wasn’t going to be easy there.

And after getting past this obstacle, there were a few more bouldering obstacles before finally reaching the dead-end at the Santa Ynez Falls still flowing fairly well though we were a bit disappointed at the increased tagging there.

We also saw pink tape and a partially cut rope above some footholds carved into a vertical slab of rock, but we weren’t going to go up past this waterfall as it seemed way to risky to proceed.

So we got to this waterfall at about 10:30am, and we pretty much had this place alone, which was surprisingly nice.

I recalled the last time we were here, we had to share this place with a handful of other people, but this time around, it did seem surprisingly serene (even for a Saturday).

Thus, we took some time documenting this place while also taking some people shots and stuff, and then we started to head back out some time around 10:45am.

Things were pretty smooth sailing as we started to see more people making their way towards the falls, but we did have some difficulty on that steep scramble next to the first waterfall obstacle.

In this instance, we now had to scoot and slide our way down to trying to find some footholds, which were pretty much blind as it was hard to see where they were as we were going down.

Julie had the most difficulty making her way down while Tahia seemed to make it down no problem though she too took quite a bit of time to figure out how best to go without falling into the water.

When it came my turn, Julie helped me to place my feet on the footholds as I was blindly going down backwards.

But once that was done at 10:55am, we were pretty much home free to make it all the way back to the trailhead in the Pacific Palisades area.

Along the way, we did see that Indian family with the dad carrying the child in a carrier, and we warned him about trying to bring that child up the waterfall obstacle that we had struggled with.

They seemed appreciative of the advice we were giving them, but I’m not sure they fully grasped the difficulty of that section with a kid though I’m sure they’ll see what we mean once they get there.

The rest of the way was pretty straightforward though we were seeing even more people making their way up to the falls, but it still didn’t feel as overwhelming as say Eaton Canyon Falls.

Eventually at about 11:45am, we made it back to the neighborhood by the trailhead, where we noticed a few more cars street parking, but it wasn’t crazy.

And so ended this rather short excursion for the day as we now had a Versailles lunch to look forward to (something we had been craving for perhaps a year since we no longer live on the west side anymore when this place was a staple).

Then, we had to go to Little Armenia to hang out with Auntie Mary so we could give her the Girl Scout Cookies she ordered (always supporting Tahia), and that would be my first time visiting her place.

So we eventually got to Versailles at around 12:25pm, and thankfully there was parking and we also had ourselves a pretty filling meal.

This place always hits the spot even if it’s now costing 3x more than when we used to come here and we had $6 or $7 plates of garlic chicken or garlic pork.

When we left the place fully stuffed at 1:20pm, we then had to fight the inner city traffic to get all the way up towards Hollywood to get to Auntie Mary’s (which was within sight of Griffith Park Observatory).

We ultimately got there at around 2:05pm, and then hung out for a bit (eating even more goodies despite being stuffed from Versailles).

Then, we left her place at around 3:50pm, and fought traffic all the way from there before finally making it home at 5:10pm.

This drive reminded us of why we moved away from the west side, and at least suburbia felt like a breath of fresh air again.

So with that, we got out all the stuff from the car and finally got settled at home for the rest of the weekend.

It was a nice short excursion that we did, and now the rest of the weekend was pretty much icing on the cake…