Edgar McGregor

With only four-fifths of an inch of rain over the past 3 months, the flora and fauna of Eaton Canyon are eagerly awaiting the onset of winter 2024. Back to back wetter than average winters in this region are very rare, with only six occurring the past eleven decades. As El Niño sets up in the equatorial East Pacific, hopes are high that a seventh such miracle will occur. As of December 1, 2023, Eaton Creek is flowing throughout 58.3% of the park, or 1.30 miles of the 2.23 mile journey. If you think it’s been dry recently, you aren’t imagining things. The 2024 water year is ranked 100 out of 120 years for the wettest start to a water year in old town Pasadena.

Early indications show our bad luck will end around the 4th week of December, and 2024 will in fact be a wetter than average winter. A powerful jet stream in the open Pacific is expected to annihilate the ridge of high pressure blocking storms from hitting California around the solstice. This will open to the door for multiple powerful storm systems to slam into the Golden State around the Christmas holiday. According the climatological records, how much rain falls between October and December has zero correlation with how much falls between January and March.

The map that follows shows where Eaton Creek is currently flowing below the main waterfall. Area with blue lines indicate active water flow, whereas areas with orange line indicate a dry creek bed.

This table shows how much of the creek bed from the main waterfall to the New York Dr. bridge was experiencing water flow for each month of 2023. We are slightly unsure of the September 1, 2023 numbers as the creek was drying up rapidly following the departure of Tropical Storm Hilary. All other months should be accurate, however. Photographic evidence of the lower wash around the Nature Center is appreciated.

I moved the final rock aside and watched the pooled up water began to freely flow downstream. Somebody had built a large rock barrier to allow others to cross the creek without getting wet, but in doing so they slowed the flow of Eaton Creek into the wash section of the canyon. With thousands of young tree saplings vying for survival along the quickly drying wash, I could not allow this to happen. I looked up and counted several different groups of people staring at me as if they were seeing a ghost. I found this very annoying and stared back to get them to stop.

Eaton Canyon with it’s towering mountain peaks, deep gorges, meandering creek, and infamous waterfall has recently spent a great deal of time in 2023 as the single most popular hiking trail in all of Southern California according to AllTrails. With well over 5,000 hikers per weekend day, scenes with lines of people stretched across the wilderness are not uncommon. Every Saturday morning, the main parking lot and overflow lot fill to capacity within 45 minutes, especially during the spring season. Given the beautiful attractions, huge parking lots, tons of litter, and crowds of people walking up and down the trails all hours of the day, it is no wonder this canyon has earned the nickname the “Disneyland of Hiking Trails.” For locals who live in the area, this overuse is a burden. For the plants and animals in the canyon, the overuse of this natural space can be a detriment.

Eaton Canyon is not a normal park within the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation system; it is designated as a natural area. Natural areas by definition are meant to be safe havens for native wildlife with every form of natural process including growth, erosion, and decay being present. The Eaton Canyon Nature Center has the responsibility of maintaining the native habitat by picking up litter, removing invasive species, and keeping all human impact on the park to a minimum. This task becomes difficult when hoards of people visit the park each and every day. Despite this, the truth remains the same: It is a good thing Eaton Canyon is overrun by people.

Lines of people waiting to cross river crossing #2

Eaton Canyon is in the unique position to offer Angelinos a gateway to nature itself. That very line is on the homepage of this website for a reason. For so many Angelinos, Eaton Canyon is the only natural area they actually know of and have been in. Plenty of adults who visit Eaton Canyon are witnessing a natural, unaltered creek for the first time in their lives. The canyon requires no dangerous mountain driving to reach, it is within 30 minutes of Downtown Los Angeles, and the relative flatness of the main trail from the Nature Center to the Mount Wilson Toll Bridge allows people from most age groups and physical abilities to traverse it. The canyon is accessible via the Los Angeles Metro network, the waterfall runs year-round even during times of extreme drought, and the canyon offers a plethora of unique ecological biomes to explore. Eaton Canyon is subject to blizzards, 120°F heat waves, the fiercest of all Santa Ana windstorms, wildfires, rockslides, debris flows, and flash floods giving it a unique appearance with each passing year.

Eaton Canyon is beautiful because Eaton Canyon introduces nature to people who would otherwise never see it. There is quite a bit of nature in this part of the world, but there is only one canyon where hundreds of thousands if not millions of Angelinos actually do experience the natural world for the first time. That is the purpose we serve. We do not need to fight overpopulation. The only thing we need to fight is the impact of that overpopulation.

USFS Volunteer Pat Bylard conducting graffiti abatement just above the old USGS gauging station

Educate people all you want, but the fact of the matter is that going on defense and working hard to protect this natural area is critical for its survival. If the stewards of the canyon can keep invasive species to a bare minimum, keep all the litter picked up, keep rock walls from being tagged for too long, and keep rock barriers from blocking water flow, the overuse of Eaton Canyon can become a good thing. If we properly maintain this area, we can prove to all other natural areas worldwide that the impacts of human overuse are not something that randomly happens to parks, but rather something they choose to allow. Are we going to choose to allow it at Eaton Canyon? Or are we going to stand up, be the change we want to see, and be Angelinos’ gateway to nature?

L.A. County employees removing an invasive Castor Bean grove in the Equestrian Area

A recent list released by Fordor’s.com, a popular traveling website, has highlighted the San Gabriel National Monument as one of 9 natural spaces on Earth not to visit in 2024. The National Monument just north of Los Angeles was added to the list because it is covered in graffiti, littered with trash, and so heavily impacted by visitors that entire endemic species are being threatened with extinction. The situation has gotten so bad that piles of litter 3 feet high can sometimes be spotted in the East Fork of the San Gabriel River.

Although Eaton Canyon is not currently located within the official boundaries of the national monument, that could change in the near future. More on the efforts by Congresswoman Judy Chu and U.S. Senator Alex Padilla to expand the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument can be read here. One has to wonder whether such a designation would make any kind of difference at Los Angeles’s most popular waterfall hiking trail.

Here is a link to the 2024 “do not visit” list.