Mt. San Jacinto Outdoor Recreation

Lower Eaton Canyon - 3BIV

Lower Eaton Canyon is the crown jewel of the San Gabriel canyons. Its a fun water park with some beautiful rappels. On 7.1.14 the US Forestry Department had planned on closing the lower part of the canyon, essentially banning canyoneering. On 6.30.14 we decided to run it one last legal time before the possible closure went into effect.

Eaton has about 20 slides and jumps along with about 8 rappels. Trip went great, we had a small injury to a chin from a slip and fall but nothing a little rappelling couldn't fix. Great times. As you descend the final rappel it is always into a group of people that hike up from the bottom. As each one of us hit the bottom we were met with a round of applause. As I was pulling the rope from the final rap, with 40 onlookers.... it got stuck. Took about 2 minutes to free the rope but eventually got it down. We made it car to car in 6.5 hours on the nose.

Video can be seen here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Jr9FqM07E&feature=youtu.be

Pete and I gearing up


Frank on Rappel in "The Gully"


Second to last rappel


Final Rappel
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So that's what is looks like in the day light, we ran it that day as well, we went at 6:30 PM and were back at the car by 10:25 PM, great canyon other than the PO on the approach and the graffiti as you get to the lower end. The only one that was cheering us as we came down were the night creatures, frogs and birds, one that made a whistling sound that we thought was our other canyoneer.

Great pictures, thanks for the TR and great work, like you we kept it "legal for now"

Doing it at night keeps the last rap quite.