Moments in Dirt and Ink

Sketches in the out-of-doors for the month. There's free moments after lunch when conferencing at Asilomar. Another little trek up to the little waterfall. Rustic Canyon is the home of many things, including a Boy Scout Camp. All the way out into the yard.

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. Switzer Falls is found just a short way up highway 2, the first stop past the turnoff to the old highway to Lancaster. We found a spot down by the picnic area, so didn't have to hike down the road. It's a very popular spot and there often are no places anywhere. The trail heads downhill with many crossings over the creek. The water was low, so crossings were easy with many many rocks to choose from. It isn't always like that. There is a campground about halfway down as the canyon narrows tightly heading into a few waterfalls, cascades, and rapids. There the trail stays high passing a few scary cliff edges. Eventually it splits with the long trek to JPL on the right and a downhill sprint to the bottom of the tight canyon on the left. Then there's just a few more crossings to get to the bottom of the waterfall that is accessible. The waterfall, which has a bit of a cascade character to it and is only

Will Rogers and Topanga State Parks Locate the trailhead. I was tasked with finding a hike again for the day. This one should be "about three miles" which meant six miles total. I found one that was six miles where most of that was a loop going out of Will Rogers State Park. It seems to be a popular place for Easter with egg hunts adding to the usual soccer game traffic. The games we saw looked like they're probably a city league rather than a bunch of kids. We poked our heads into the barn and outside of it are buried a couple of ol' Will's favorite ponies, one for polo and one for roping. The old polo fields were today's soccer fields. Then we hiked up the loop to the local Inspiration point. We hadn't figured out which trail we were coming back along so thought going up that it didn't matter which way we took that loop. Turned out if we'd looked more carefully we'd have seen the arrow on the edge saying "to Rustic Canyon

Monrovia Canyon Park Locate the trailhead. We took a second trip of Monrovia Canyon . This time we only did the small canyon with the falls, and not a bit of Sawpit that it is a tributary to. This makes the trail even shorter. We didn't quite do the shortest version, but it was very nearly so. As before, the trail is sometimes narrow, often wide, and always easy. It goes past the old flood control barriers... Where there's a creek, there's flood control. Or it seams that way. Sometimes even very large double bits of flood control like this one.