Waterwheel Creek Trail - Trail, Return Visit

Just like the creek, you won't find this trail on any map either. There's an awesome surprise awaiting at the top!

This trail is brutally steep, many sections above 50% gradient. Up to the grove of trees I stopped at, I traveled 2100 ft. and gained 700 ft. of elevation or 33% average gradient. It looks to be another 0.25 mile and 300 ft. of climbing to get to the official Waterwheel Creek Trail. If you did this same trip down the Canyon trail, Stevens Creek and Montebello Roads, you're looking at ~10 miles. Or you could go up the Canyon Trail, then up the Indian Creek Trail and back down Montebello Road which is ~5 miles or from the official parking lot at the top via the Nature / Canyon / Bella Vista trails and the dirt portion of Montebello road which would be ~9 miles for a loop. So this faint user trail makes an interesting way to efficiently access this area.

Interesting point, after using historic topo maps and the new LIDAR based hill shade maps to find old roads and trails, this one was found using good old fashioned "looking for signs on the ground" technique. However, after losing signs of the trail at a grove of trees, switching over to a hill shade map reveals the presence of an old pond dam and network of roads about 100 yards or meters from there. So this is a "hybrid" hike, combining multiple sources of navigation, along with a 34 mile round trip bike ride to get here.

Round trip of the trail was a bit over a mile (1.65km) and 750 ft. (230m) elevation gain/loss and around 2 hours time.

USGS National Map Viewer w/ Hill Shade:
https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

More to come...
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