On the trail: Upper Winter Creek

This week has been insanely hot (90 degrees in February!), so I had to actually get my butt out of bed early to get this hike in before Koa would be miserable. I spend a good amount of time at Chantry Flat, but most of my exploring has been on the trails heading down from the parking lot (Sturtevant Falls, Hermit Falls, etc) but this week I wanted to check out the trails that go up and behind the parking lot and picnic area, so we took a stab at the Upper Winter Creek Trail.

Location: Chantry Flat Recreation Area in the Angeles National Forest (near Sierra Madre/Arcadia)
Length: 6 miles
Difficulty: Moderate
Parking: There is a small parking lot, it fills up FAST on the weekends and people park alongside the road.
Fees: Forest Adventure Pass required. $5 for the day or $30 for a year pass that also grants you access to all of the Southern California National Forests (totally worth it). Available at the Pack Station (only open Friday- Sunday).


3/02/16 Update: In a super frustrating turn of events, I accidentally deleted this entire post and learned the hard way that Blogger does not store my post drafts/previous versions of posts. So here's a quick synopsis of what I recall from this hike:
The Upper Winter Creek trail head is up behind the parking lot, past the picnic area. The trail is largely shaded, and starts out with a fairly steady uphill incline, which breaks into some more sunny, open areas with gorgeous views. Definitely bring water, because we heated up fast! Bug spray could also make this hike more enjoyable — once again we forgot to bring any, and the bugs were definitely irritating both of us.


The trail is fairly narrow in many parts, so this is not a great trail for a reactive dog. At one point we passed a rather noisy little Pittie wearing a prong collar that made me a bit nervous.



As the trail starts to flatten out, you'll reach this little sign, where you can either continue take the steeper trail towards Mt. Wilson, or continue onward a bit. We took the right fork, and found a fun little stream, where Koa did some wading, and we got cooled off and refreshed for the hike back to the parking lot. The hike back was a breeze and went by in what felt like no time at all. If I remember correctly, this hike took us somewhere around 2 hours to complete.