Hiked October 17 and 18, 2026. Hikes #31 and #32 for the year.
I've been here frequently, most recently, in October 2019. Click on that link, and it'll take you to the post for that trip, with embedded links for previous trips to the Aspen Grove.
This was my second and third attempt to get to the Aspen Grove, this year. My first attempted never made it ten miles from home. I got on the freeway around 2pm on October 9, and figured I'd have just enough time to fit a short hike in before dark. But rather than taking 2 or even 2 1/2 hours, the gps was telling me 3 1/2 hours, which would put me up there uncomfortably close to sunset, and possibly not enough time to fit the hike in. So I just turned around.
My second attempt was Hike 31 for the year, an attempt at an alternate route, catching the Aspen Grove trail from the south. But it turned out that this trail was so overgrown and crossed by eroded sections that I eventually gave up, spending about five hours covering 9.5 miles, then having to turn around.
So Hike #32 was the one that finally got me to the Aspen Grove. Given the weather and the date, I was not confident of good color, and that expectations was borne out. Still, despite getting my legs really nicked up, I enjoyed two very nice days of hiking in the San Bernardino National Forest.
The finally-successful route was just to park off of CA-38, on the road that would lead to the Heart Bar camping area. This is Forest Road 1N02, which normally passes through the Heart Bar area, then meets 2N05, which ascends to the formal trailhead, less than a mile from the actual aspen grove. Howver, due to construction, you need to park basically at Highway 38. That means a lot of additional walking on a dirt road. It's still scenic, and has the advantage of letting you not nick your legs up if you're wearing shorts.
The little aspen grove you're looking for is a unique relict of the past, as there are essentially no other places you can walk among aspen in southern California; they're a high mountain species, but this little population is a literal island of the species, surrounded by an aspen desert. [There are allegedly other scattered populations in the forest, but I have not confirmed those other locations.]
Once you get to the actual trailhead, you can see the fire damage. Fewer dead and standing trees that last time I was here, however. I don't know how many fell and how many were salvage saled. Still, there's a lot of dead and standing trees.
Unlike the approach on the dirt road, the actual trail is single-track, with occasional sections where you need to avoid downed trees. Nothing compared to the hike the previous day, though.
Fish Creek is on your left. It's now a wide and barren riverbed, filled with thick gravel and large boulders. It's also eroded down, so, especially where you approach the old creek crossing, instead of a small dip, it's a steep drop down a ravine, then a little bit of a search to find a way up the other side.
You can see the "island" of aspen has gotten smaller due to the scouring floods of the past five years or so. And the trees don't seem to have grown much in height since back then. But it's hard to tell; by the time I made this trip, most of the trees had shed their leaves. Those that remained were more brown than golden. Still, I'm glad I finally made it back. I'm just sadder that I no longer think it'll look "normal" again in my hiking lifetime.
I returned the way I came. I considered taking the trail that splits off from the road near the old launch point. But my legs were already beat up from yesterday, and I managed to give myself some pretty serious puncutures on a tree branch as I started down this trail. Walking more single-track would have been meant more scrapping and scratching of my legs. So after about 100 yards of going down, I turned around and headed down the dirt road. The result of the long swing around was a 6.9 miles hike. Probably half the distance (but the same altitude gain, obviously) if I had taken the trail coming and going.
The previous day's hike was somewhat longer, and a lot tougher. I tried to manage a different route to the aspen grove, but wound up getting stuck. Large areas of trail were washed out, or blocked by down trees and overgrown brush. I kept thinking, "Man, I don't want to have to walk back through that," and kept pushing forward, but eventually bit the bullet, well short of the junction with the trail that would have led to the aspen grove. Nearly ten very slow miles, with lots of backtracking as I looked for ways forward.
Of course, that one, before I started, I thought I could just take a shortcut over the ridge. But it looked dangerously steep, with no use trail over, so I took the long, winding, overgrown route.
Google Maps doesn't label these trails. On Alltrails, the lowest dirt road is unlabled, but it shows the part after and above where I passed structures as the Santa Ana River trail, or 2E03. On the actual trail, I also saw sign posts with that indication. When I reached where the "Aspen Grove Trail" was supposed to intersect, I followed that route, but it was not well-defined and frequently petered into nothing. This was especially true when walking along the river, where the path basically is just up the canyon, and there was no indication of an actual trail.
Unfortunately, when I look at my Alltrails recording, the map does not have a scale. So, while the app lets me see how far I actually traveled, I can not directly measure how far I did not travel on the intended route. My best guess is I was within 1 to 1.3 miles of the actual aspen grove when I turned around.
The return time was a lot shorter than the forward time, in part because you know where you're trying to get, and have some recollection of how you got there. Less time picking a route among several bad alternatives. Still required some backtracking, especially where I dropped off the Santa Ana River trail and went down to where I could see the structures I passed on the way up.
Once outside of the Fish Creek watershed and on to the Santa Ana River watershed, there was also the option of walking up the river or just going back to the road. In fact, on the Fish Creek Part, there was also the option of staying above left, above right, or in the river bed. I'm not sure what the easiest route would have been. But, for the last bit, getting back to my car, I just went back to the road and walked adjacent to that.
One thing I did learn is that, on a Sunday, late morning or early afternoon, there's a LOT of traffic heading back down from Big Bear. And some drivers are extremely impatient. Ideally, make use of the turnouts, so you don't have them doing anything stupider than they're going to do.
Couple of flowering plants on my way. They're the last three shots in this post. I do recall the middle one, with lots of little flowers, was id'd as a spreading fleabane. I'm sure it's part of the aster family, and I've seen similar plants at altitude in the Cedar Breaks area, as well.
Meanwhile, the one directly to the left of this text is a Tansyleap Tansyaster.
Meanwhile, I just ran that last photo through my plant id app. It says it's a rabbit brush or rabbitbrush.
First decent hikes in a really lot time. Not a lot of climbing, though. It felt good to be getting some steps in. As always, I'm hoping to get more hikes in the coming weeks. The rain is conveniently avoiding the next weekend!
