Azusa Canyon!!

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In the San Gabriel mountains above "The Canyon City", Azusa California, The San Gabriel river has cut a big, beautiful, sprawling canyon with many forks that drain a large portion of the southern side of the mountains. I've spent lots of time hiking and exploring all over it and it really holds a special place in my heart. Unfortunately I hadn't been up there in quite awhile, too long really, but this last week I finally got back up there. My friend @brian.rrr had invited me to join him for a day of gold prospecting on the East Fork of the river and my other friend invited me to join him and his kids on a trip to some swimming holes on the North Fork of the river. So I decided to combine the two and make it a two day trip up in the canyon.

I loaded up my truck and me, my friend @csusbgeochem1, and my cousin, followed my other friend and his kids up highway 39 into the canyon. We headed up passed the Morris dam and the San Gabriel dam and I was really surprised at how low the water levels were in the reservoirs. With all the rain we've received here in SoCal this year I thought the reservoirs would be practically full to the brim, but to my surprise they were the lowest I've ever seen them in all my years up there. Even drought years. I really do wonder why that is.

Above the reservoirs the canyon has a major intersection where it splits into the East, West, and North forks. We followed my friend passed the East and West and up the North fork to the spot where he had found some really cool swimming holes! We parked in a turnout and made the short walk down a dirt road to the river. We setup a little picnic area under the shade of the big Alder trees and then spent the rest of the day enjoying the pools. The water was pretty cold and so I didn't do a ton of swimming, but I did brave it and get wet a couple times. And the cold water didn't dissuade the kids at all!

Overlooking the North Fork of the San Gabriel river

Arriving at the river

The lower swimming holes

Swimming in the main big swimming hole

Looking up river

The upper swimming holes

After a fun day on the North Fork my friends headed home and I spent the night in my truck in a turnout above the Morris reservoir so I could be up and ready early to meet @brian.rrr the next morning. In the morning I headed up the East fork to the trailhead and Brian met me there shortly after. We got our prospecting gear together, tossed on our packs and headed up the trail. We hiked about a mile up river to where there was a nice little waterfall flowing in a small side canyon. We stopped there for a few minutes and did a couple pans just to test it out. I didn't think we'd see any gold there and I was right.

From the falls we headed down to the river and picked a spot to dig just below First Crossing. The river was flowing high and fast and was quite murky. We got out our gold pans and started digging and panning. I picked a pretty good spot and started finding flakes of gold right away and ended up digging the same spot all day. Brian didn't have quite as much luck and ended up sampling from a few different spots. But we were both finding gold and we were both having fun, so we did pan after pan after pan. At one point I even found a nice "picker"(a larger flake of gold that can be "picked" up with your bare fingers) which was the highlight of the day and definitely got the gold fever going!

We dug and dug, getting ourselves a hell of a good workout, each pan hoping for another picker. Eventually the day was getting late and we had to wrap it up. We didn't get another picker, but we found gold and we had a lot of fun spending time out in nature. We packed up our gear and made the hike out to the trailhead. I spent some time there chatting with a few other hikers and prospectors and then made the drive back down the mountain and back home. Back home I got my gold out of my snuffer bottle, cleaned it up in the pan, and put it into a glass vial. It wasn't enough to really be worth weighing it, but it was definitely enough to get my gold fever going again and I'm hoping to get back out to the East Fork again soon!!

Brian at the waterfall