Wallace Creek
Carrizo Plain National Monument
Locate the trail head.This is one of the generally short established hikes in the monument. The attraction of Wallace Creek is not in its picturesque nature but in what it shows about our environment. The creek crosses the San Andreas Fault and when the fault slips, the upper and lower sections of the creek move apart. The hike starts at a small lot beside the road where brochures discussing the fault movement and how this creek shows it are available. A short walk brings one to the upper section of the creek and the fault.
At the creek, spurs head out to various points of interest. One goes up the hill for an overview of how the fault changes the creek. Another heads northwest along the fault to the lower section of the creek for another view of it. A third heads southeast along the fault to other creek beds that are also being changed by the action of the fault.
After the spur of trail up the hill to overlook the offset in the creek, use trail continues for quite some distance along the side of the creek up into the Temblor Range above. I did not continue very far along this route, so cannot say exactly how far it stretches.
©2013 Valerie Norton
Posted 23 Feb 2013
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