This is not the sort of short local hike I would usually bother writing something up about but what was only intended as a get-out-of-the-house hike turned out to be a pleasant surprise and a good reminder of the joys that can be found if you go looking. Heather and I set out for a short hike at Sycamore Canyon, one of the prominent open spaces in Riverside with granite hills cut by an arroyo network. Initially I was thinking of an out-and-back to check out an obscure palm oasis I had been to a few times. I navigated by phone to make out the right trail at several branches we encountered. Every gopher hole seemed to have a lizard darting into it. It was fairly windy. We followed the scratchy overgrown trail to the oasis where I was surprised at the loud sound of the creek below. Where I was expecting a trickle we encountered healthy spring flows, highly unusual this late in the year. We pivoted our plans to follow the creek down 2000ft to the next trail crossing where we could loop back.
Along the way we passed by many excellent little cascading falls and knee-deep pools filled with hand-sized crayfish. The going was a little slow as we strove to keep our feet dry and dodge the occasional poison oak stand. Nearly every pool had at least a half-dozen colorful crayfish but I was surprised to see zero frogs. At one point we picked a fight with a crayfish which resulted in a weird staredown. At another point we saw impressively thick sycamore roots clawing their way at a dark pool.
Travel was a little scratchy but after about 45 minutes we reached the trail crossing and beelined back to the trailhead. Honestly it was a much more enjoyable hike than the Kitchen Creek trip I did a couple weekends before and a nice reminder of some of the local treasures we have available to us.
No comments:
Post a Comment