Edgar McGregor

With Eaton Canyon coming off it’s fourth wettest winter in recorded history, the usual spring-time surge in visitation this year has been enhanced. Over the past month, as many as 25,000 people are hitting the trails of the beloved mountain ravine each and every weekend. These exceptionally high visitation rates have led to a marked increase in vegetation damage, trash, and graffiti in the canyon.

Trash levels on the main trails have not been as high as they are now since the 2020 Memorial Day debacle. Cleanup crews are being deployed throughout the Eaton Canyon Natural Area to abate the litter problem, but the graffiti will take more time. 

We remind folks to try and visit some of our other local canyons and hiking trails during these busy times. Rubio Canyon, Bailey Canyon, Las Flores Canyon, and the Altadena Crest Trail all offer amazing views, biodiverse landscapes, and friendly trail users. Wet winters such as 2023 are a rare occurrence in this part of the world, and it is a very important time for the plants and animals that call this canyon home to recover from the recent drought. 

We’d ask you not to litter, but nobody who litters visits this Web site. Please consider bringing out your own bucket and gloves to help clean up trash in the canyon. We know it is not ideal and can sometimes be gross, but somebody has to do it, right? 

For only the fourth time in recorded history, Eaton Canyon has picked up over 42” of rain in a single winter season. After years of crushing drought and heat, water is once again prevalent in the canyon. Through May 11th, here are the season’s rain totals throughout the canyon:

• Eaton Dam: 42.72”
• Stonehill Neighborhood: 41.44″
• Henninger Helipad: 42.15″
• Inspiration Point: 45.04″
• Camp Hi-Hill: 60.24”

All of this water has helped the canyon turn lush and green for the summer season. Eaton Canyon is technically classified as having a Mediterranean climate. However, much of the vegetation here is more representative of a semi-arid desert thanks to the infrequently but heavy nature of winter storms. Water is not a common occurrence in the park, and so the next few months will be a very unique ecological period for the canyon with water readily available in the creek.

Water in the wash is expected to stick around nearly all summer, and it may be until July before the first crossing even dries up. The waterfall will still have a decent amount of water in it come November, unlike recent years where it was reduced to a trickle. It has rained on 62 days since October 1, 2022, which is more rainy days than any year since 2011. Only 6 other years since 1908 saw more rainy days than 2023. None of the infamous years of 2005, 1980, 1969, 1943, and 1939, which all witnessed exceptional flooding within the park, are on that list. Rain totals over an entire winter are not what causes flooding in Eaton Canyon. Instead, it is short bursts of exceptionally high rainfall over a period of hours or days that has sent 10-foot high walls of water through the park in the past. The 2023 winter, while wet, lacked exceptional storms that would’ve caused major flooding within the park. The storms were well spaced out, moderate, and did not contain extreme rain rates. As a result, minimal damage to the park was done. You can read more on this winter’s impacts here.

All of this heavy precipitation inevitably will grow fuels of wildfires later this year. In shrub-like ecosystems like ours, it is actually years with heavy rains that can see the most extreme wildfires. The extreme wildfire years of 2017, 2018, and 2020 in Southern California were not exceptionally dry years.

On Monday, March 27th, clean-up crews set out to clear an abandoned homeless encampment located ~80 yards up the east trailhead of the Altadena Crest Trail in Eaton Canyon. The encampment belonged to a homeless person found dead of hypothermia in a ditch about 20 yards below the Pinecrest Gate a month prior. No personal items aside from an iPhone were found during the clean-up.

The trash found there included copious amounts of plastic, electronic waste, half-buried bedding, cans of butane, batteries, lighters, and broken bicycles. In all, twenty 50-gallon bags were filled totaling over 1,000 lbs. of municipal waste. Much of the small canyon that the encampment was located in experienced mud flows when heavy rains fell, and some trash may still be buried under the mud. Clean-up crews will return to the location periodically to check for any trash that resurfaces. To the park staff’s knowledge, this is the only encampment in the upper half of the wash. 

In October 1993 during a northerly Santa Ana wind event, a campfire started by a transient along the Mount Wilson Toll Road spread to nearby brush, setting it on fire. While fire officials were busy with several other fires burning throughout Southern California, the fire descended the San Gabriel Mountains and ultimately burned over 100 homes lining the canyon. Homelessness is a continuing issue within the canyon, with over a dozen abandoned encampments having been cleared so far this decade. The county is aware of three other encampments located near the Nature Center that are also abandoned. 

Before photograph by Mitch Marich, after photograph by Edgar McGregor