San Antonio Canyon Explorations: Into Stoddard Canyon

April 04, 2022

San Antonio Canyon Explorations: Into Stoddard Canyon

Looking down from Google Earth, poring over the paper maps spread across the table, are fine starts, but until your feet are on the ground right there at each of those places you've picked out, you don't really know that to expect. I figure by now I am as familiar with the bottom of San Antonio Canyon as anyone, from the dam up to about the area of Cascade Canyon / Barrett Canyon. For a while now, my eyes have been turned to all those smaller side canyons, those claw marks scratched into the mountainsides. The canyons on the west start with Evey, are then followed by Spruce, Cat and Dry Lake dropping down from Brindle Mountain and Sunset Peak; then circling around the east side at Barrett Canyon (with its well-trod trail over to West Cucamonga Canyon), Cascade Canyon, followed by a myriad of small, steep, unnamed clefts ascending the flank of Stoddard Peak, before the opening of Stoddard Canyon appears.

There were peaks to be seen, but not on this day. On this day you would have had to close your eyes and picture them from memory. On this day the fog rode circles half way up the canyon slopes, closing it like the rubber stopper on a drain. Nothing came in, nothing went out.

"...Jump in, jump in, jump in, jump into the fog."

(Haggis, Murphy & Knudsen)

Stoddard Canyon lies just past that prominently slanted ridge, middle right

Stoddard Canyon with the culvert under Mountain Ave at lower right

rocky wash

how old, and how far down canyon has that piece of the old road with its yellow paint been washed over the years

the power station

I've stopped numerous times, during my rides up canyon, to look across the boulder-smashed wash at the mouth of Stoddard Canyon (*incidentally, many of the pics and vids identified as Stoddard Canyon are really Cascade Canyon), and wondered if there was a way in from here. Can a way be made up its bottom? Can a way be made as far as its fork where the main branch turns abruptly from an easterly direction to a northerly one? Can a way be made all the way to the Barrett-Stoddard Trail? Has such a way already been beaten into it?

It was not part of the plan for the day but, you know, sometimes you just have to go ahead and do it and so, picking my way down into the wash, over boulders, through the sparse sprigs of willow which, never-the-less, grabbed at my handlebars to prevent an easy passage, I made it across to the culvert under Mountain Avenue and went through. A group of bicyclists passed by, not the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of individuals, just one long whoooooooooosh of a big group. Motors passed as well. Putting bike on shoulder I started up canyon, away from the road.

There were no tracks of any kind, giving traction to the idea that few ever pass this way but, even in more isolated areas, this is usually a fallacy of exploration, one that this time was made evident by a sun-bleached can of Pacifico cerveza. Leaning bike against boulder and continuing afoot, passed the steel teeth of a debris barrier, and took stock. Passage was not going to be easy in the stream bed, no matter its dryness - boulders, willow shoots and other shrubs would make this endeavor especially time consuming. That's when I noticed what appeared to be a level area a couple head-heights above on the left. Well, well, of course there's a trail, you just can't see it while crossing under the road. That ought to make things a whole lot easier next time.