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.Â
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 McGregorÂ