"Scathed"

28-April 2024: Nevertheless, as we started to make our way down the trail, Julie apparently hadn’t put on sunscreen yet so she was doing it while we were walking the paved path.

However, in one sudden instant, I noticed that she stumbled forward and fell hard on the ground sprawling on her stomach.

She sounded like she was in a bit of pain, and I immediately saw that she had stepped into a pothole on the road that was just the size of her foot (or at least sized just right to swallow her foot).

I was concerned that she might have broken or fractured something…

It was about 8:30am when Julie woke me up and asked if we were going to do the hike today.

With Tahia’s softball team losing their first-round game of the end-of-season tournament last Thursday, we knew that they wouldn’t be playing on Sunday.

So Julie planned on doing San Antonio Falls, which was a place we hadn’t done since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (at a time when most of LA County’s Trails were closed).

That said, I was also curious about checking out the Stoddard Canyon Falls, which was something I had been meaning to check out when I realized that it was near San Antonio Falls after that COVID-19 visit.

Still, with me trying to get through all the content creation from the Spring Break trip to Greece, I didn’t get to bed until about 1am.

So as much as I wanted to sleep in a bit longer, I knew that I had to get up and not waste the day away in bed.

Even then with all the commotion about getting ready for a hike (and bringing a change of shoes knowing that they might get wet), it still took us a while to get ready.

It actually took Julie the longest to get ready so even Tahia and I used that idle time to play catch on the street in front of our house as she was keen on improving her pitching.

So finally by about 9:45am, we started to leave home and head up towards Mt Baldy.

Normally, I don’t like starting hikes this late in the morning on a weekend, but it was what it was.

That said, I was surprised by how light the traffic was heading east and then north towards the 210 freeway.

But once we got onto Mt Baldy Road, we caught up to a caravan of maybe at least 5 slow moving cars where the car in the very front refused to use the pullouts.

Sadly, this kind of inconsiderate driving etiquette (or lack thereof) was the norm, and it’s just something we had to put up with.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when we finally got to the trailhead for the Stoddard Canyon Falls hike, we saw that there were at least 2 cars in front of us that made right turns into the Barrett-Stoddard Road.

When we made the turn, I saw that the nearest lot was pretty much full so I just backtracked to the Mt Baldy Road and joined the handful of cars that were parked in the large paved pullout or lot across the way.

There were actually plenty of spaces at this large pullout area when we finally parked the car at 10:30am, but by the time we finally put on our gear and started to walk cross the road, there were practically no more spaces left!

That was the first indication to me that this place was super popular (even with the uncertainty of not being able to make it to the base of Stoddard Canyon Falls due to San Antonio Creek likely to be running high).

Anyways, crossing the road was kind of a dangerous affair because coming in from the south side was a bit of a blind turn with cars typically overspeeding and going well over 50mph.

At the same time, there were cars going downhill from the north though we could at least see cars coming from that side easily.

Once we got down the familiar road ramp to the parking area closest to the trailhead, we could see that there were even more cars showing up and driving past a No Parking sign around a power substation.

Apparently, those cars drove down to a minor creek ford before getting to an unpaved parking lot on the other side, and even that side’s lot was filling up fast.

I was quite surprised at how popular this place was, especially in light of my concerns about high water, which might make getting all the way to the end of the Stoddard Canyon Falls hike treacherous.

Nevertheless, as we started to make our way down the trail, Julie apparently hadn’t put on sunscreen yet so she was doing it while we were walking the paved path.

However, in one sudden instant, I noticed that she stumbled forward and fell hard on the ground sprawling on her stomach.

She sounded like she was in a bit of pain, and I immediately saw that she had stepped into a pothole on the road that was just the size of her foot (or at least sized just right to swallow her foot).

I was concerned that she might have broken or fractured something, but it turned out that she just had a couple of knee scrapes though her left leg was bleeding quite a bit.

I guess that’s what happens when you’re not paying attention to your surroundings, even for a paved section of road like this one that seemed to have suffered from a fair bit of erosion perhaps from all the rain and snow we had gotten in February and March.

I wondered why this road was paved as clearly it must have been well-used and perhaps popular to drive on at one point given all this infrastructure.

But now it was clear that little or no maintenance was happening to this road these days – hence the pothole (as well as sections of asphalt sinking into the wider wash below).

After taking some of my first aid stuff in my day pack, Tahia helped Julie wrap her wounds, which pretty much amounted to scabs like the kind I got playing baseball after sliding on dirt that could have used more water (and instead felt more like concrete).

In the meantime (it was 11am by now), I went forward to see how much further the waterfall was.

At first, I noticed that some people were hiking alongside San Antonio Creek from the other parking area to come to our paved road that I was on.

As they did so, I saw there was a bridge with San Antonio Creek passing through it with some downstream cascades.

That bridge reminded me of a so-called graffiti tunnel apparently nearby here because it was tagged up on its inside (though the creepy graffiti tunnel was actually somewhere else which was significantly longer than this).

So I wasn’t feeling like making a detour to get a closer look, especially with the amount of water that was flowing through that bridge.

Anyways, it turned out that I didn’t have to go far from where the incident happened to get to the Stoddard Canyon Falls (at least where its brink was).

In fact, there was a bend in the road, where there seemed to be a makeshift overlook right into a narrow part of the canyon.

I could see that the creek was rushing loudly, and it pretty much rushed into a brink that must be the actual waterfall as it disappeared into a chute.

I saw one lady actually scramble down to a rock just upstream of the dangerous chute, and I knew I wasn’t going to get down there as the risk versus reward just wasn’t there.

As I looked a little further downstream, I could see a handful of people actually wade against the current and try to make their way to the bottom of the Stoddard Canyon Falls, which couldn’t be seen from the road as it was facing away from it.

Although I had a hard time photographing the commotion down below (due to the shadows and foliage getting in the way), I could clearly see that the creek was thigh deep (even waist deep for some people).

It definitely looked way too sketchy, and I mentally checked out and decided that I wasan’t going to chance it just to see the falls in this state.

Still, I went just to at least see how the trail was and how the scramble down to the level of the creek would be.

After getting past a couple of landslide sections, I did see that there was one eroded embankment where some people might opt to scramble down to the creek though it looked rather steep and slippery.

So I kept going past this section past a tree, and then I saw a different embankment that was narrower, but it was more manageable.

After going down this approach, I then got down to the level of the creek, which was definitely rushing fast.

Some of the people that passed me on the way to the falls had stopped here because they then saw a family heading back while wading through the current in thigh-deep water.

I just felt that the risk versus reward on this day just wasn’t there, and so I opted to just turn back and vow to come back in the Summer when there would be not the dangerous levels of snowmelt funneling into this canyon.

After taking a few photos of the commotion down here, I then sweated my way back up to the road.

By the time I backtracked to the long, landslided, eroded part, I could see Julie and Tahia scouting the commotion down below.

When I rejoined them, we all knew that we could only do so much with this excursion (especially with Julie’s injury), and so we backtracked all the way to the car.

Along the way, we saw lots of groups of people apparently looking to come in with sandals and shorts, and I wondered if they were aware of what they were in for should they try to make it all the way to the waterfall.

No doubt, they fit the stereotypical profile of people who saw something on the socials, decide they could just come in unprepared, and then get their reality check one way or another when they do show up.

Eventually by about 11:50am, we were back at the car, and there were still more cars showing up!

Indeed, this place really blew up, and I wondered whether we might even be able to come back this Summer if crowds become such a problem that the Forest Service may have to shut this place down.

Nevertheless, with the Stoddard Canyon Falls excursion being somewhat of a fail (though we weren’t surprised given how much snow we had and how much of that was melting right now), we decided to salvage something for today and go to San Antonio Falls further up the road.

So we ultimately drove up the familiar Mt Baldy Road past the turnoff for Ice House Canyon, then up through Baldy Village, before finally getting past the Manker Flat Campground.

By about 12:05pm, we arrived at the pretty busy divided road right by the Falls Road turnoff, which is only for authorized vehicles and foot traffic.

When we got out of the car, we definitely smelled engine and/or brakes though I wasn’t sure if that was all from our car or not.

Mt Baldy was one of those places where it was far enough that we wouldn’t really want to beat up our car (especially with all the spiking auto insurance rates lately), but it was not far enough that we should rent a car.

In any case, we quickly geared up, walked the familiar partially-paved road while noticing that there were still some snow on the mountains nearby.

Then, when we rounded the main bend on Falls Road, we could clearly see that San Antonio Falls was flowing quite well beneath the snow still present higher above the falls.

Not long after going past a trio of driveways (again, the main reason why Falls Road was probably developed in the first place), we then got to the familiar lookout at a hairpin turn with a view of the San Antonio Falls flowing quite well.

At first, I contemplated going up the Falls Road even more to see if there were more views of the San Antonio Falls from different vantage points, but it became clear to me that the trail kept veering away from the falls.

So that little detour didn’t go far, and after taking some initial shots of San Antonio Falls at the lookout, we all then went to the base of the falls.

Remembering the sketchy ledge clinging eroded part of this scramble, I was surprised to see that the trail became re-routed so it went beneath the sketchy eroded part.

That made this trail way easier than before, and thus there were no concerns about Julie’s knee scrapes getting opened up even more.

However, when we did get towards the level of the creek, there were some sit-and-scoot maneuvers that Julie had to make to ensure her knee didn’t bend too far.

But aside from that, we pretty much spent the next half-hour or so just basking in front of the San Antonio Falls, where there was still enough water in the creek to have to get the feet wet (or at least it was not worth the risk of trying to stay dry).

I also noticed that there were some people who tried to scramble higher up a landslide-prone eection though it wasn’t clear if there was any reward for that.

One of those guys who went up there did take a steeper and equally sketchy route up along the waterfall where I did see some rope had been set up, but I think he only went so far before he decided to come back down.

Anyways, Tahia and I were enjoying the waterfall from the opposite side of the creek before rejoining Julie to take a few more shots.

Julie wanted to consider this waterfall as the best one in Southern California, and she wanted me to update our Top 10 So Cal List accordingly, but I was still not going to supplant Fish Canyon Falls over this even though it has been closed for years.

I personally don’t want to unnecessarily update the list over politics and poor land management, and thus we had this debate about that list as we finally pried ourselves away from the San Antonio Falls to return to the car.

By the time we got to the car at 1:45pm, we saw that there was a ranger handing out paper printouts of maps of the immediate area.

At first we thought he might have done the rounds to issue tickets to people parked without a valid Adventure Pass, but when got up to the table, it seemed like he wasn’t interested in issuing citations.

In any case, we then drove back down the Mt Baldy Road and eventually took local streets towards the city of Ontario, where we eventually stopped by the King Taco down there at 2:30pm.

The food pretty much hit the spot, and this time there didn’t seem to be any riff raff like I remembered the last time I was here (or the last time we were at the North Long Beach location immediately after our Greece trip).

I guess when it comes to authentic Mexican food, KTs tend to be in the hood with the lone exception being their Pasadena location.

Anyways, once we were done with our KT fix, we went past the cupcake place (which was closed on this day), which was in a plaza next to the I-10 Freeway.

We then proceeded to take the 10 freeway back towards Brea, where we made a brief Mother’s stop at 3:??pm to get some last-minute groceries on the way.

Julie used to come here a lot, but when more Sprouts, Trader Joe’s and Whole Paycheck markets had opened up near us, we had less reason to come out this way to a pricier store (albeit with decent selection that most other stores don’t have).

Finally, at 4:30pm, we were back at home, where we could finally unwind from this eventful day and get ready for the week… even if Julie left the day somewhat scathed…