Santa Anita Canyon Hike

Two weeks ago I went on this hike with my friend Steve.  We had been on several hikes along the Santa Monica mountains and were ready to branch out a little.  After consulting our favorite LA hiking website, modernhiker.com, we decided we would go a little further and head to the San Gabriels.  Our destination was Santa Anita Canyon, a shady canyon in the mountains north of Pasadena.

Parking could have been a little bit of a nightmare but we got really lucky.  We climbed down into the canyon and were pleasantly surprised by how shady it was and were thrilled that the river actually had some water in it.  Thank god because it was almost 100 degrees.  This sign was a bit sobering.

True and depressing. Thank you sign...

 We had heard that there was a waterfall and I was skeptical of that too.  A waterfall in LA?  Well we trudged through a group of old cabins and some flowers.

And we got to the waterfall!  While it wasn't the roaring Yosemite falls it was pretty cool especially for SoCal.

Don't do it Steve!!

We followed the river up through the canyon for several miles.  It was beautiful and green.  I couldn't believe we were still in LA.    

Yeah we are special, don't hate.

We kept hiking and hiking, because we thought the trail would loop. But when it didnt we decided to turn back.  About 6 miles later we were back where we started.  It was a beautiful hike, I got to see some trees, and we got to splash around in the river and were under shade for most of the hike.  Good times!

A pretty cool flower.