HIKING ADVENTURES: Aztec falls

WHEN: July, 2014

WHY: Because our summer bucket list includes completing three new to us hikes, and we wanted to explore Lake Arrowhead’s hiking scene.

We actually set out to head down to San Diego to check out the Mt Wilson hike, but we found out that hike was a little longer than we expected and we kinda got a late start, so we reevaluated and decided to head up the mountain to Lake Arrowhead. Side note: this girl doesn’t do well with windy roads, or anything that can induce motion sickness for that matter. Just the thought of heading up the windy mountain roads has me nauseated. Luckily I kept my sea band wrist bands at the bottom of my purse from the boat ride over to Catalina. They don’t completely get rid of the motion sickness, but it makes it bare able, unlike Dramamine which knocks me out and leaves me sleepy the rest of the day!

Apparently when we started our hike, we missed the actual trail going in, so we were climbing over rocks, and pulling back tree branches on half our hike. We weren’t the only ones lost though- we ran into multiple groups on our way. We came across one watering hole, where there were people hanging out. I knew by the looks of it that it wasn’t Aztec falls. So we contemplated for about 20 minutes and finally came to the conclusion that there was no way around it, so we had to wade through it to get to the other side to continue on our journey.

We got to a larger water hole with cliffs about 50-60 feet up, that kids were jumping off of and I knew we had reached Aztec falls. Neither of us jumped, and I’m sure Trav would’ve jumped but as of now Travis has no medical insurance. Actually, there was one guy that chose to jump off the highest point, into the water. Only, he missed the deep end and ended up hitting his right foot on a rock under the water. He came up and was in so much pain, but managed to swim to shore. There were so many helpful people that stayed by his side, helped make him a splint, and carry him up the rocks. By the time they got up the hill of rocks, across the watering hole, and up another set of rocks, the fire crew made there way down.

We kept going, but there was no trail to be found, so we quickly turned around, and found the designated hiking trail on our way out so we didn’t have to rock climb our way out. In the end we logged a total of 3 miles, and added it to our yearly milechallenge. Travis kept trying to convince me to up the mileage due to the difficulty factor, but a mile is a mile. Sure we had to wade through water, climb over rocks, and do the limbo under tree branches, but it was worth it.