Take a Hike in Southern California

Tar/Sespe Creek Topo

Hike date: June 20, 2009–I men­tioned ear­lier that on the Inter­net I found some good infor­ma­tion about a num­ber of hikes down to Sespe Creek in the Sespe Wilder­ness. A cou­ple of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia hikes caught my eye: Sespe Creek Hot Springs and Sespe Creek/Tar Creek hikes. After look­ing at these arti­cles, the Sespe/Tar Creek hike looked like the most inter­est­ing because of the cas­cades and water­falls down Tar Creek. It was also shorter than the Hot Springs hike which appealed to us since we were newby hik­ers and in need of being in bet­ter shape. 7.3 miles to the Sespe/Tar Creek or 9.3 miles to the Sespe Hot Springs.  Tar Creek won out since we had had no idea those cas­cades and falls were even back there—we wanted to see them!

The boys and I started out a lit­tle after 8am on Sun­day. It was a nice, cool, over­cast morn­ing for a hike. It took us about a half hour to drive to the Tar Creek trail­head and dirt park­ing area. This park­ing area is 1.5 miles past the old fire dis­trict build­ings you’ll pass on the left side of the road. Once we arrived at our des­ti­na­tion, I jumped out of the car to start lac­ing up my boots and all of a sud­den real­ized I left my hat, neck ban­dana and gloves back at the house. I couldn’t believe it—I was in such a hurry and anx­ious to get going that I just sim­ply for­got them.  I almost hopped back in the car to go back for them until I real­ized that it would take an hour out of our hike and we really didn’t know what we were fac­ing and how much time it would take us to do the hike and get back to the car before dark. We def­i­nitely wanted to stop and spend some time at the cas­cades, pools and water­falls. So, we went on.

I don’t know what I was think­ing. The over­cast may hang around for awhile, but not all day and the Sespe is not any place you want to spend the day in with­out sun cover. We were not five min­utes into the hike when lay­ing there, right in the mid­dle of the trail, was a very nice can­vas hat. Voila! What would you call that? We looked around and none of us saw or heard any­one on the trail – it was 8:30 in the morn­ing. So I picked it up and tried it out. It fit me very well.

As we saun­tered on down the trail, we stopped and took a num­ber of pic­tures. We felt very good about being there on the trail that morn­ing. It was all down­hill and I remarked to the boys that this was great, but we have to remem­ber that we’ll be hik­ing up this on the way back to the car. We finally came to the point where the trail inter­sected with Tar Creek.  We decided this was where we should leave the trail and move on down the creek in order to see the cas­cades and water­falls. So, we did just that. There wasn’t much water in the creek so the going was pretty easy.  Gar­rett remarked about the dark pink rocks. Actu­ally they were medium brown and I went into my lit­tle spiel about Sespe Brown­stone and how there was a quarry some­where in the Sespe and that the brown­stone was quar­ried out and used for build­ing homes and build­ings in Los Ange­les and San Diego. We all remarked at how hard get­ting that stone out of the Canyon after what we had just hiked through. Then we won­dered where the road might be and if this trail was on any part of it.

House made with Sespe Brownstone.

Some of the arti­cles I read on the Inter­net said to be pre­pared to do some boul­der hop­ping. Well, we remarked that if this was all the worse the boul­ders got – then it seemed pretty cinchy! After a short while the boul­ders started get­ting larger…and larger…and larger. These things were start­ing to get as large as houses the far­ther down the creek we went. We then come onto an area that looked like it could be the cas­cades (if more water were there). Even with­out much water, all of the smooth rock for­ma­tions were really cool to look at and be around.

Among the Tar Creek boulders.

We hung out at the cas­cades for a lit­tle while and had a snack. Then off on down the creek, boul­der hop­ping all the way. We finally got to the first big water­falls. WOW!!! We had no idea. Tar Creek comes out onto a rock cliff edge and drops maybe 50+ feet down into a solid rock ravine that forces Tar Creek to take a sharp turn to the left.

Tar Creek Cascades

Another creek drains into the rocky basin from the right. To get down to the bot­tom of the falls we had to hike up and to the right while fol­low­ing a trail along the top side of the ravine. Once we scam­pered back down to the bot­tom of the creek we hiked back up the ravine. There are nice places to just rest and take it easy. There is also a small cave behind the falls on the Tar Creek side. There is lit­tle water flow­ing this time of year, but I can only imag­ine what this place must look like after a big rain.

First falls Tar Creek

share my blog

2 Responses to “Tar/Sespe Creek Hike”