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On Saturday, June 22, the Eaton Canyon Nature Center hosted its 2024 ‘A Day In Nature’ event. Over 20 booths from various local organizations, such as Caltech, the Angeles National Forest, the Sierra Club, and the Pasadena Audubon Society, were set up to help engage locals with San Gabriel Valley area organizations. In addition to the various groups, there were several booths containing works from local artists, including pottery, painted concrete, and murals. The Michael C. Long auditorium was transformed into an art gallery to showcase works by artist Jose Ramirez who paints the Los Angeles Basin at night as viewed by those in the San Gabriel Mountains. The art gallery will remain open periodically throughout the summer.

The event also included the 4th Saturday in which the Nature Center’s “B.A.R.K. Ranger” program was active, an effort to improve dog owner responsibility within Eaton Canyon. With park temperatures ranging from 95°F to 100°F and ground temperatures exceeding 140°F, the conditions posed significant risks to canines. These ground temperatures can damage and burn the pads of dog’s feet. Dogs also do not sweat, and can only cool themselves through panting. The combination of hot air and ground temperatures means many dogs can experience heat exhaustion which can be fatal.

At about 9:45 am during the event, several people watched an owl fly through the Nature Center’s lobby and land on a perch up in the rafters. Staff were immediately notified and identified the animal to be a Western Screech Owl, a native to Eaton Canyon. For the following 5 hours, the motionless owl peacefully watched over the event as hundreds of people streamed through, buying gifts, creating arts and crafts, and observing the Nature Center’s animal ambassadors, all the while oblivious to what was above them. Owls are typically nocturnal animals who sleep during the day and hunt at night, so it’s possible this one got scared out of its normal resting spot. Due to the presence of over a dozen taxidermies within the Nature Center, the owl was not at all out of place and could have easily been missed by most patrons.

Towards 3:00 pm as the event was wrapping up, staff and volunteers were able to safely remove the owl from the Nature Center. It was last seen flying away towards a large Coast Live Oak tree just outside the patio.

The Nature Center’s next major event will be held in November 2024.

Since the debacle in 2020, even the mere thought of Memorial Day Weekend has struck fear in the minds of daily visitors to Eaton Canyon. Each year, this specific weekend sees the highest influx of Angelinos drawn by the holiday, the onset of summer, favorable weather, and high creek flows. The combination of COVID-19 and TikTok has allowed the canyon to surge in popularity across Southern California, with the main waterfall frequently being a top result when one searches “Waterfalls in Los Angeles.” On top of that, Eaton Canyon is one of the most centrally located and accessible waterfalls within Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States.

As a consequence to all of this, approximately 35,000 to 50,000 people visited Eaton Canyon between Saturday morning, May 25th and Monday evening, May 27th, 2024. Only Memorial Day weekend 2020 itself was busier.

The mass influx of people into the canyon has led to multiple issues in the area, including excessive trash, graffiti, unlicensed vendors, illegal parking, and loud music. The busy weekend has renewed conversations among locals who want to do something about the Disneyland-type visitation levels, with calls for more sheriffs, more park rangers, a fee for entry, a towing company on stand-by, and even a return to the COVID-era reservation system. The Angeles National Forest does not consider the waterfall trail a real trail, and thus no forest rangers occupy the area.

Hopes are that visitation will drop in the canyon after Big Santa Anita Canyon, which has been closed since August 2020 due to the Bobcat Fire and the 2023 floods, will reopen on June 1st.

Between November 2022 and May 2024, Eaton Canyon has experienced an extraordinary number of rainstorms, including atmospheric rivers, lightning storms, cold fronts, monsoon surges, and even its first landfalling tropical cyclone in 87 years. These remarkable storms have collectively delivered between 75 and 100 inches of rainfall throughout the canyon, marking this the wettest 18-month period in 117 years of recorded weather history. Today, a walk through the canyon reveals an unfamiliar landscape, with moss-covered trees, lush poison oak, and dense vegetation in nearly every direction. In some areas, the scene looks much more like a subtropical rainforest than a semi-arid mediterranean climate. This excess rainfall has also meant relief from our historic megadrought, increased biodiversity, and healthy water levels in Eaton Creek.

During that same 18-month period, however, average temperatures in Eaton Canyon have been 5.37°F above the preindustrial average. This combination of extreme wetness and heat is unprecedented in recorded history and likely unmatched in the past 3,000,000 years since Earth was last this warm.

Despite the current beauty of the canyon, there is a danger hiding in the brush; one that has the potential to destroy everything we know and love.

For many, the photograph above showcases Eaton Canyon’s incredible untamed, natural beauty. The thick brush is full of fungi, lichens, mosses, invertebrates, birds, and even the occasional mammal. However, for those wildfire-cautious among us, the scene above is also rather alarming. Unlike many parts of the word, California experiences an annual summer drought from June through November, during which rainfall is minimal or nonexistent. This lush vegetation is not expected to get any appreciable precipitation for the next 6 months, and it is therefore expected to dry out.

Wildfires need three main ingredients to ignite: oxygen, heat, and dry fuel. California’s wildfires are significantly influenced by the availability of dry fuel, such as dead trees, leaf matter, and chaparral brush. The relationship between wet and dry years plays a crucial role in determining wildfire risk:

• Wet year followed by a wet year: Abundant fuel that remains too wet to burn explosively.
• Dry year followed by a wet year: Limited fuel that remains too wet to ignite easily.
• Wet year followed by a dry year: Abundant fuel that becomes dangerously dry. (see: 2020 California firestorms)
• Dry year followed by a dry year: Limited fuel that is highly flammable.

Throughout summer and autumn 2024, the vegetation in Eaton Canyon will likely remain too wet to support an explosive wildfire, as both 2023 and 2024 were much wetter than average. However, if winter 2025 is dry, the massive amounts of fuel in the canyon will continue to dry out, posing an extraordinarily dangerous situation come summer and autumn 2025. Radically increasing summer temperatures also increase evaporation which accelerates the drying-out of fuels.

Eaton Canyon will be destroyed by a wildfire again sometime in the future, just like it was in 1978 and 1993. With the area hotter than ever before and thick brush overcrowding the canyon, this time it could be far, far worse.