Devils Slide water recon with the kid TR

[Andy]

On Sunday I took our son for a nice little hike up devils Slide and had a great time. I wanted to take advantage of the recent cooler weather and also get a read on late season water sources after such a dry year. We woke up to a light rain in Temecula, but by the time we hit the trail it was a perfectly sunny autumn morning. We lazily made our way up to Saddle Junction, then onto Tahquitz Meadow to take a peek at its trusty spring. Its looking good and still running at about 2 liters a minute with a nice little pool of crystal clear water. After a while we made our way north through Skunk Cabbage meadow where there is still a nice little flow of clear water as well. We continued up to the junction with the Willow Creek trail and headed back west until we came to our third checkpoint, the "other" spring. I was happy to have finally found this little gem on the the north side of the valley. And even though it was a bit weaker than the others, there was definitely a good a mount of water in this otherwise dry area. After poking around a bit and informing some lost hikers that they were NOT near Little Round Valley like they'd hoped (where their friends were camped) we continued on back to Saddle Junction. As we started to drop down the slide we veered off to the left and found that Powder Box spring was still offering a bit of water too, though far less than the other sources. We hoped back on the trail and split a well deserved PB&J on the way back to the car.

P.S. I've been trying to post some pics, but Photobucket is testing my nerves, so maybe later

Here's the obligatory Acme Map of the day.
A: Tahquitz Spring
B: Skunk Cabbage Creek (Candy's Creek)
C: Other Spring "North Cabbage" Has a nice ring to it eh?
D: Powder Box Spring
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=33.77326,-11 ... 0Peak%20CA

[halhiker]

I wonder if those hikers you ran into are the same as these who got rescued Sunday night.

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside- ... d-safe.ece

[Hikin_Jim]

Andy,

Is the "spring" you've marked at point "C" an actual spring or is it more of a creek? (guess I need to get out to the SJ's more often).

HJ

[Andy]

I wonder if those hikers you ran into are the same as these who got rescued Sunday night.

Hal, the description the article gave doesn't match, but the rest kind of pans out...

Is the "spring" you've marked at point "C" an actual spring or is it more of a creek? (guess I need to get out to the SJ's more often).

Jim, it is a spring complete with the black plastic pipe found elsewhere, though its long ago been hacked off and left in the creek bottom. It's kind of hard to make out unless you were looking for it, especially if the water in the creek is flowing. (Insert "look for the water in the water" joke here)
If you head back upstream about 20 paces from where the trail crosses the drainage, you'll find a small cascade and pool where the end of the pipe is actually buried in the silt. I'm going to try and head back there again before too much snowfall and see if its still producing.

[Hikin_Jim]

Interesting. I'm sure I've been by it, but it's been a while. Been spending more time in the SGW lately.

I did see some water in the SGW in the Falls Creek area. I'm pretty sure this wasn't a spring.


HJ

[RMRUpete]

That story about lost hikers, totally wrong. Two climbers stranded on Tahquitz Rock. RMRU had two of our members climb up the Trough Route and then set up two repels down to the Finger Trip Treaverse to reach the two climbers about 11pm. Belayed them up to the top and took them down the friction route, ariving back at Humber Park at 1:30am Monday morning. Write up and photos on RMRU web site soon.

[halhiker]

That story about lost hikers, totally wrong. Two climbers stranded on Tahquitz Rock. RMRU had two of our members climb up the Trough Route and then set up two repels down to the Finger Trip Treaverse to reach the two climbers about 11pm. Belayed them up to the top and took them down the friction route, ariving back at Humber Park at 1:30am Monday morning. Write up and photos on RMRU web site soon.

The article says they were huddled on a large rock. That's pretty accurate but newspaper standards.

[zippetydude]

Did it say the rock was in France?

BTW, that's some dedication by RMRU in the middle of the night. Was there no place to safely spend the night and then climb down in the morning light?

z

[Hikin_Jim]

The article says they were huddled on a large rock. That's pretty accurate but newspaper standards.

Yeah, I guess Tahquitz could be considered "large." Freakin' newspapers.

HJ