Leon Turnbull Photography

After taking a couple weeks off, my ankle finally feels better. Not 100 percent yet for sure, but more than enough that I feel I can do some serious hiking again. Off trail hiking. To remote, tough to get to waterfalls. Down in the LA area, I went to a couple easy ones. Not a problem for my healing ankle. Walking around Disneyland for four days I survived. The worst part of that was just the fact that you are walking around on pavement all day. Walking on pavement is many times worse than walking on dirt trails. My feet were in agony by the end of that. But my ankle was fine. Last weekend, I wanted to get out hiking, but instead took the weekend off. This weekend, though, I definitely wanted to get back on the hiking grid. And I did.

The destination was to be a new waterfall for me: Upper Marble Creek Falls. I was not sure about access to this waterfall, and I had heard it was difficult, cliffy, and with abundant poison oak. I also expected to find many ticks, as this year is supposedly the worst in ages (and the last two years have been incredibly awful for ticks). I decided to take my dog along on this hike. Normally on a hike like this I would not take her, because I do not know the terrain, and I could easily get to a place where she would not be able to go any further. But she is getting older, and probably does not have too many hiking years left in her, and I was feeling like she needs to have as much fun now as she possibly can. So I took her along. And of course, that made her very happy.

If there were a lot of ticks though, the hike would not last long for either of us. I was watching very closely but I saw none of the little buggers all day long. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it may have been much too cold for them. Poison oak though was a different matter. There was plenty of that and more. Doh.

My initial thought on this waterfall was to approach it from above. Looking at a map that seems to be the quickest route. Unfortunately it is all private property above the falls, and I did not see any way to get to it without crossing through anyone’s backyard. Not wanting to give up, I looked at my map again, and saw a possible route from below. A longer route but maybe that would not be private, and as I found out it was not. Yeah. We parked the car and walked across a wide open field over to the creek drainage. From there, we started up towards the falls, and that is where we encountered all the oak, but the going was not too bad otherwise. As we got closer to the falls, the terrain got a bit rougher and steeper, but again, not too bad. I just had to be careful with my ankle is all. I could hear the waterfall as we approached, but I could not see any water in the creek downstream. Weird, I thought. When we arrived at the falls I found out why. At the base of the falls, the water disappeared underground. It must  re-emerge somewhere, but I’m not sure where. If there was more water flowing, it obviously would not all go underground, but there was not a lot of water flowing right now. It should be spectacular right now, of course, but our very dry winter has taken that away. It was still a very lovely waterfall though, even at low water flows, dropping an amazing 77 ft. into a tight narrow gorge. At high flows it would be an amazing spot to be, but also likely very difficult to photograph if there was a lot of spray. I’m quite certain I will return here when the waterfall is flowing greater. It was not difficult to get to, the only tough part was all the poison oak.

On the way back across the fields, I noticed from a long way off a couple dogs on the other side of the field. No owners. No houses nearby. They saw us coming, and just waited beside my car for us to come. They knew we were coming back that way. They were just puppies, and incredibly friendly little guys, jumping all over us when we got there. We eventually managed to escape them, and got back in the car, at which time they continued to play with each other, rolling around in the grass. Fun stuff.

After this hike, we went on a second hike in the area, looking for a second waterfall. I found it, a very big one, but it was surrounded by huge cliffs on each side of it, and the waterfall offered up no views of itself. I searched for one in vain. There must be a way to see this one. I will definitely be looking for a way to get back to this one.