Canyoneering at Lytle Creek (Middle Fork) - San Bernadino Mountains (3BIII)

It was the day after my 7 month old puppy died of stage 4 kidney failure. I was looking for a distraction by way of a big adventure, and ideally, not too far from home. My grieving heart needed it. We choose the Lytle Creek of Middle Fork in the San Gabriel mountains and San Bernardino national forest. This is a mere 2 hours from my house.

My previous experience was a for a Class 3BIII hike through the iconic Subway in Zion National Park with two measly rappels into ankle deep to waist deep water with no hydraulics. The rappels themselves were not over water features. Suffice to say, despite the same grading, Middle Fork was a completely different experience.

Middle Fork in Lytle creek featured 5 rappels all in or directly adjacent to up to 100ft waterfalls. REI calls it one of the best Canyoneering trips in southern California. The water level was pretty high, with the deepest hitting me distressingly at eye level. There were not insignificant hydraulics in the pools. The water was cold, but this part was quite refreshing in the 90 degree heat on the mid June day. At least, it was refreshing until I hit the brunt of a waterfall with thousands of gallons of waters hitting square in the back of the neck.

Robin and I woke up reasonably late with heavy chests at 6:45am in Escondido. We were able to pack a few things into my truck and leave the house by 8am. This was not an alpine start. We cruised up to the San Bernardino’s north of LA, even stopping for gas, and arrived at the trailhead by 10:30am. We began our hike, and I found it more difficult than anticipated. The approach was only three miles, but up 1000ft of elevation gain starting at 7000ft. A small amount of the approach was on scree, and it was HOT, around 90 degrees outside. Robin rued that we did not get started earlier. A horsefly bit me on the knee. I did not know that horseflies bit.

I was annoyed that Robin wanted to download the Garmin map to his watch during breakfast from the ropewiki page, but this turned out to be a fortunate decision on the trail. The trail got faint in many locations, and the map removed the uncertainty, especially at the point where we depart from the scree trail down the 200 yards towards the beginning of the first rappel. That super steep elevation loss on loose rocks and leaves made the previous hour and a half of climbing feel redundant and meaningless, but at least it was fast. Robin fell down accidentally on a branch during this scree descent. That bruise on his glutamus maximus was one of the more burly ones on the trip.

As promised per the rope wiki we found a massive boulder that signaled that it was time to suit up. I pulled my wetsuit and neoprene socks on over sweaty hiking skin, and immediately felt hot. I stepped my leather boots into the water and felt a rush of relief. The water was like ice. The $14 I paid for neoprene socks were worth every penny. I waited patiently for Robin to suit up into his outfit and we started the first rappel.  

I felt a rush of excitement at the first rappel. There was no way not to rappel directly through the water feature due to the placement of the bolt. This already was completely different from my Subway Zion Experience. It was only a 35ft rappel. We were feeling fabulous and so stoked. The icey water felt refreshing in the 90 degree weather.

It is understood between robin and I that he will rappel first due to our weight and height difference. He has a better chance of not getting stuck underwater due to his height and his weight effectively tests the system for me. He went first and immediately slipped into the waterfall due to the moss and slick rock and got immediately soaked. All good still. He gave me the thumbs up at the bottom where I could see him instead of the standard “off rappel” that I couldn’t hear over the roar of the waterfall anyway.

I performed the rappel next and felt incredibly good. This was easy stuff. By the end of the second rappel I was noticing that getting hit with the water really started taking it out of me. It was exhausting being hit with all that water, and the rope naturally wants to stay in the middle of the watercourse. This adventure burned more energy than I thought it would. It was at the end of the third rappel that things started getting serious.

The third rappel was 85ft, and dropped away into a hanging rappel. I at this point wanted to start staying away from the center of the watercourse because my spidey senses started alerting me that the water was getting more dangerous. We had two options, a bolt or a tree, and the instructions called the tree a “sporty” descent. I wasn’t feeling like doing anything Sporty I went with what I perceived to be the safer less exciting bolted line. Robin completely disappeared during his rappel, but he gave me a thumbs up at the end like normal so I went ahead LIKE EVERYTHING WAS NORMAL. Despite my best intention, the bolt line brought me to the center of the watercourse. I couldn’t pull away from it. The hanging rappel even put me in a worse position to get away from the center of the waterfall. I started getting hit hard with water, and started to feel panic. I looked down, and let the water pound against the back of my helmet and rain jacket hood. I could still breath if I stared directly down. The water pummeled me. I let myself stop and assess the situation. I couldn’t forget what I was doing. My stupid autoblock with the wet rope simply made too much friction for my tired arms to do an efficient job, especially as I started to panic. I lowered myself slowly into the water, and the hydraulics in the pool started throwing me around, knocking me down as I tried to disconnect to the rope in a way that didn’t cause me to lose the rope or ATC. I struggled to swim attached to a rope with wet boots towards the slopy exit point. I couldn’t get a good grip on the lip to pull myself out, and the water was distressingly at eye level. I let out a panicked and gurgled “help!” to Robin who snapped to attention realizing I was in danger. He threw a hand out to me which gave me the littlest bit of stability I needed to get out of the pool. I can see how those three canyoneers last year got in trouble in exactly the same spot.

The cold water mixed with the adrenaline flowing through my body made me feel a sense of dread and fear that haven’t felt in a long time. It felt like a near miss motorcycle accident. I kept repeating to robin that I was scared. I knew that the next two rappels were longer. Robin asked me what he could do. Nothing, just let me complain I guess (lol), because I didn’t see another way out of the situation.  

The next rappel was also scary, with an exposed moved needed to get to the anchor. It wasn’t a big deal though, this was just trad stuff.

By the fifth rappel I was getting tired of getting beat up by heavy flowing water. I tried my hardest to stay out of the watercourse. I was done. I was thankful that I was able to maneouver out of it. At this point I was able to laugh at myself because of how scared I got before. We were having fun again.

We ended the final rappel by 4pm. We were done 5.5 hours later, and found ourselves back at the trailhead at the 6.5 hour mark at 5pm. Not bad for a bunch of out of shape climbers trying this out.

By 7pm we were back in San Diego getting take out Vietnamese food, remarking at how big an adventure this was to get mailbox-to-mailbox completely within daylight hours. We woke up the next day completely black and blue.  

This was an incredible adventure and I think we are going to want to do this again. Below is a gear list for my reference as well as yours.

GEAR LIST

·      Shorty springsuit (me) and neoprene socks (Robin wore a rain jacket and regular hiking pants but he never gets as cold as I do).

·      Oboz hiking boots – but approach shoes would have been fine. I just don’t have any with good rubber

·      60m dynamic rope, one of my old ones from my climbing days that I don’t intend to use again for lead climbing.

·      An ATC

·      A dynema sling for an autoblock + Carabiner (I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING THIS IN THE FUTURE).

·      A thick climbing harness formally used for big wall climbing (a designated canyoneering harness would have been better).

·      A helmet (I used a black diamond climbing helmet)

·      A rainjacket with hood. (I am so happy I had the hood because it kept the waterfall from drowning me when I was in the full brunt).

·      100ft Retrieval line (unused)

·      Garmin inreach (unused, but having it in my bag is reassuring).

·      Printed beta from Ropewiki in a ziplock bag. (Handy to debrief what the next rappel would look like at each station.)

·      3 liters of water in a camel pack that Robin and I shared. (3 liters was plenty for us, too).

·      Garmin Watch + map (a definite nice to have)

·      Extra slings, carabiners, + 2 cordlettes “just in case”. But we decided to go for all the bolted raps.

·      Headlamps in a drybag (unused)

·      A change of clothes. It was nice not to hike in my wetsuit back to the car.  

I wish I had (notes to self for next time).

·      Knee pads or a longer wet suit to protect my shins. My shins are black and blue

·      Not an ATC + autoblock this had way too much friction and I was unable to release myself when stuck under the water fall.

·      Gloves

·      A real dry bag. My cheesy Women’s Climbing festival dry bag did not keep my change of clothes dry.

·      Bugspray  ( the horse fly bit me).

·      A knife to cut apart some old tat that I saw and would never rappel on.

This will be great warm up for Mystery Canyon!