Hiked Friday, April 8. I decided today would be a good day to buy my annual Adventure Pass, so I stopped at the Angeles National Forest headquarters, located on the west side of Santa Anita Avenue, just south of the 210 freeway. My plan now is to try for something in the Cleveland National Forest (Santa Ana Mountains) sometime next week or the week after. I may also hit Heaton Flat if the snow level drops over the weekend.
Chantry Flat is located at the north end of Santa Anita Avenue. You can reach Santa Anita from the 210 freeway, or the west-bound San Bernardino Freeway. If you're heading east on the 10, you'd need to exit at Baldwin, go north, and then take one of the many east-west streets (Valley, Lower Azusa, Duarte, Foothill, or what ever) one mile east to Santa Anita. An Adventure Pass is required. There's a USFS office at Chantry, but I wasn't sure of their hours, so I bought my pass at the Forest HQ.
There's a small (15-foot) falls just 1/5 of a mile or so down the pavement. It'll be on your left. Water was flowing well over the road here, so I knew the falls would also be worth a peek. There's plenty of poison oak on the short hike here, so if you take the detour, be careful.
It being spring break and a Friday, there were plenty of people on the trail today. One large group of senior citizens (20-25) was heading in, as was at least one large group of youths (12 or so) and many, many, many groups of 2-5 hikers. On my return trip, I had to wait for a train of about 6 donkeys that were carrying in provisions for one of the camping groups.
Nice water flow at Sturtevant, which is something around 50 feet in height (substantially taller than Eaton Canyon Falls). It's funny, that if you look carefully, you'll note there's a veil of water out front, with water still sticking to the wall and showing you what the waterfall would look like later in the season.Today capped off my fifth hike in the last week. They've all been pretty short, though. Still not sure when I'll be able to do a longer hike. Between weather and other commitments, looks like these shorter hikes will be the rule for the next week, at least.
About 3.8 miles total walking for the day. Cool weather. I would have to say it felt fall-like, even thought it's early spring. Not a whole lot of colorful flowers along the way. The most common was the white one, pictured above. Also, some colored sycamore leaves created a contrast to the yellow-green new growth of the alder trees.
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