Millard Canyon

6/16/13 A relatively short mountain run into Millard Canyon near Mt. Wilson with Dr. Rock turned out to be more interesting than expected. After getting mildly lost, we did a run/hike in an area that turned out to be completely closed for safety reasons. Another fun day on the trails!

1 After a bit of trouble finding the trailhead, then heading off on the wrong trail for a while, we finally found our way up to the ridge heading towards Millard Canyon.	2 View inland from the ridge.	3 View from the ridge looking out across Altadena and all the way out towards the ocean.	4 Heading down into the Millard Canyon, the "trail" doesn't look much used or maintained at all. I love this type of trail, but I'm not so sure Dr. Rock does.
5 Narrow singletrack heading down the canyon wall alongside the blooming Yucca.	6 Heading deep into the canyon.	7 The trail is narrow and washed out in places, with steep drop offs. Awesome.	8 Made it to the bottom of the canyon. Here the trail completely dissapears. I search for a while and find absolutely nothing.
9 The Dawn Gold Mine is here, which must be the end of the trail. There's still some old equipment lying around.	10 Entrance to the tiny mine.	11 We came across someone else at the mine who said you could follow the creek bed all the way back down instead of taking the trail that we did. So we decided to give that a try.	12 A look at Dr. Rock rock hopping down the steep creek bed.
13 Definitely not runnable, but climbig down the rocks was a lot of fun. You can see someone actually has the "trail" marked with arrows on the rocks.	14 In places, the "trail" involves bushwacking through the shrubs. Hopefully not too much poision oak in there.	15 Dr. Rock working his way down the creek bed.	16 A little bit of water in the creek and quite a bit of green.
17 Great terrain and a bit of running water in the creek.	18 Dr. Rock making his way across a tricky section.	19 Dr. Rock's picture of me coming back over the same section.	20 The top of Millard Falls. Totally dry but probably pretty nice in a really wet year.
21 Dr. Rock's picture of me at the top of the falls.	22 We finally make it to the other end of the "trail" where we find a trail closed sign. They evidently forgot to put one at the other end of the trail!	23 Back onto the maintained section of trail looking back at the crevice where Millard Falls would be in a wet year.	24 Some nice trail on the way down.
25 Back down to the trailhead. We find a sign indicating that the entire area we had been in was totally closed for safety reasons. Now the unmaintained state of the trail makes a lot more sense! While the day didn't turn out to be the run we had hoped for, it was a lot of fun nonetheless.