Freehiking in California

Fred revisits Piru Creek, one of his favorite places for naked hiking

Piru Creek below Pyramid Dam. Angeles National Forest, California. (Forest Service photo by Tim Palmer/Wikipedia)

LOS ANGELES — It’s still winter here. Not much hiking to be done. So, this is another post about a favorite naked hiking place. Today, we’ll start with one of my favorites, Piru Creek, south of Pyramid Lake.

Terrain is so rough I’ve never penetrated more than three miles down from the trailhead. I need to do an overnight someday.

Piru Creek offers an immense amount of hiking. Some hiking is on established trails, and some is a mix of bushwhacking, stream crossing and boulder hopping. You can go as far as you want. The dense brush and rocks slow me down to less than a mile per hour. If I have 8 hours of daylight to work with, I plan on a couple of hours going out, then the same coming back, and a couple of hours of goofing off time. A hot day adds extra goofing off time.

Downstream of the dam, water flow is fairly constant. Sometimes in drought, they’ll cut the flow back a bit — but they can’t cut it to zero. There is a law that there has to be enough flow to keep the non-native trout alive for the fisherman. Other times it will flood, 10 feet above the normal level. This could be torrential rains or the dam letting out water to simulate heavy rain. Some native species need this periodic flushing out to survive.

A siren near the parking area is supposed to go off in case of flood. Very reassuring.

To get there, head up I-5 from LA to the Templin Highway exit. Turn left, go under the freeway, and meet the Old Road. Turn right. Left doesn’t go anywhere.

Old Road is gated a couple of miles before Pyramid Lake Dam. Beyond this point, many movies are filmed. If it is empty, you are good to go!

OTOH, maybe not today…

I’d advise a Forest Service Adventure Pass. They have since gotten serious about collecting fees, esp. on weekends. The fine used to be $5, but it was up to $99 two years ago. Not sure what it is now.

I always buy a couple of yearly passes anyhow. I often visit the National Forests and like to support them, especially since their funding has been cut drastically. I’ve since picked up a Senior lifetime pass that also gets me into national parks. It’s a card on a cheesy hanger for your rearview mirror.

It is also an incredible place to ride your bicycle with few pedestrians and rare traffic from trucks for maintenance crews for the dam. The gated road is a much-in-demand movie set. Three miles of two- and four-lane road in semi-perfect condition, very popular for television and film companies because it is a road with no traffic and is inexpensive to use.

Slide Mountain lookout takes a real lung-pumping hike to get there.

A couple of miles down this road, a trail climbs Slide Mountain to one of the few remaining in-use fire lookout stations. Not going there today. Keep going, and you reach the dam.

Pyramid Lake Dam

If you want to get naked, you have to leave the paved path to the cyclists and head off into more difficult terrain.

This is Frenchman’s Flat, a day-use area. That canyon up ahead is where I’m going. If the place is empty, I get naked at the tree line.

Instead, I head west from the parking area, going downstream along Piru Creek. Frenchman’s Flats is on the left, a much mis-loved day-use area. (This is the Google Maps link.)

If nobody is parked in the gated area and nobody is in the campground, I will typically remove clothing and continue on “sky-clad” as soon as I hit the trees lining the creek. Otherwise, I stay clothed until I am confident nobody else has gone this way.

Sawyer Squeeze water filter. Good to have but not good enough for late summer. You need something with activated charcoal then.

Typically, I’ll have a small backpack with enough room for 3 liters of water, snacks, a headlamp, my SPOT device, and my clothes. You don’t need to take clothes with you for a short hike, but heading off to the wild, you must be prepared. You could easily break something and be stuck out there until rescue comes. I toss in my SPOT communicator, firemaking tools, a water filter and a space blanket.

“Use trail” is a trail that isn’t officially named on any map. It only exists because people use it. There is no trail maintenance.

Heading west from Frenchman’s Flats, you follow a “use trail” created by fishermen. At one point, the trail meets up with rock and water. You can either wade around or climb over. If you slip here (and it can be deep, fast and slippery), everything you carry will be submerged and soaked

Climbing up this dihedral, I once broke a bone in my foot for no apparent reason. I consider it a freak accident. It is only about 15 feet. I could have waded through the water to avoid it —but the climb looked easy and fun.

Then… oh look… someone else has been this way recently and placed rocks to guide you along the correct path. (They might be gone tomorrow.) It is a nice spot here, and you could just stop and do a bit of fishing, but I’m heading on. Back up the side of the hill, I go.

Utterly useless rock directional marker.

The trail climbs and then soon starts dropping. This section is on the side of a slope and covers a bit of talus. The view from the crest shows the trail ahead while looking down reveals some good fishing spots.

A hiking group I once went with. When they stopped, I continued on, au naturel. I told them exactly what I was doing. One of them said, “Are you really going to go on naked?” “Yup!” I replied and stepped just out of view to strip. Nobody was bothered, rather, they were bemused by the idea. (OTOH, nobody came to join me.) I hiked with them again, many times in the future. Be honest and be upfront about it. If you are not, there is no chance for freehiking to ever become more accepted.

Left, you see poison oak in the spring. Very bright, shiny green. Right, you see it after the summer heat has got to it. There are always three leaflets in the compound leaf. Some people see the pretty red and pick them for decoration. Bad idea.

As you descend to the river, start watching for poison oak. I have gotten to the point where I subconsciously avoid the stuff, unaware that I’m doing it. This is a very good skill for a nudie to have.

The river makes an abrupt right turn a couple hundred meters ahead. There are spots where one can swim. In spring, a high flow of water flushes out all the accumulated organic crap, and water becomes clear. You are now entering the far eastern edge of the Sespe Wilderness area, but there is no signage to tell you.

Baby Southern Pacific Rattlesnake, recently hatched, larger than life. Snakes are a concern and one more reason to hike mindfully.

In the summer, the flow drops and the water slows, becoming stagnant. Algae will bloom and die but can’t go anywhere and … just rots. The dammed lake upstream will often suffer an algal bloom during the triple-digit summer days and become unsafe to ski or swim in. The river will often stink from July through September. You can cool your feet off or wade around, but I wouldn’t swim in it.

Ribbon of green even in mid-summer.

Even if the water is crystal clear and nobody is upstream, you should never drink the water untreated. There are plenty of sources of fecal contamination

It gets very deep through here.

Where the river turns, so do you. Just before it hits that wall, the creek is wide and shallow. There are plenty of natural stepping stones. Once you cross that spot, the trail becomes sketchy.

Right now, everything looks simple, but when you return, it is easy to miss a crossing, keep going and end up in a world of cattails or rocks. (Speaking from experience here!) At this point, turn around. You have left the ideal crossing point behind. I would understand if you left some bright marker tape as a blaze here. Just be sure to remove it on your way back.

This is a marker left for aerial and satellite surveying. Please don’t mess with it. Ran into another hiker near here. He was cool about nudity. Another day I ran into an elderly lady. She was cool, too.

A word on cairns. That’s where you stack or otherwise arrange rocks to mark a place of interest or a direction of travel. There are bunches of cairns back here. Most of them mean nothing to you. Somebody wanted to mark a favorite fishing hole or crawdad spot. Ignore them unless you are curious. If you are having difficulty looking for an easy crossing, you might get lucky by looking around a cairn in a likely location.

You can’t “get lost” here. Just head downstream, picking out the bits and pieces of trail. To return, head back upstream. You haven't lost the creek even if you “lose” the trail. The trail will always be between the creek and an adjacent wall. The river crossings are always at or before the river meets the canyon side, making it impossible to continue on without getting soaked. Blaze these crossings once you have crossed, but remove the blaze on your way back.

Have I said this clearly enough? Remove that gawd awful bright orange marking tape on your way back! Please let the rest of us wander about lost and confused.

Party central for local kids. Note the fire ring. I almost walked into a family of six illegally fishing for crawfish here.

Perhaps a quarter-mile from the first crossing, you come to a sandy opening with a large oak tree and several illegal fire rings. If I’m not already au naturel, this is where it happens. It is the last place where people commonly go. Party central for local teens. There’s another creek crossing just up ahead, right by where the creek is hard up against a rock wall. In the spring it is a great swimming hole and deep. The rest of the year, it is either too frigid or stagnant

There are sections with no real trail, and you are left to walk on rocks (Great place to sprain an ankle. Be careful.) and generally pass through clear areas, simply seeking out the easiest passage.

Past this, we have yet another field of overgrown rocks. Cross, and you are on the left side of the river (looking downstream) again. The rocks are a wonderful place to twist an ankle, fall or break something. I just go slow. The trail drops back to the river and passes another fire ring. The next river crossing is difficult to find, but the rule is that if it is impossible to go any farther without wading in deep water, you missed it and must backtrack. And beyond that, more crossings and bushwhacking for another 20 miles to Lake Piru.

Good place to break an ankle! The trail is frequently nonexistent and amounts to picking your way through large rocks and obstructions. Solid boots are a must. I often like to stash the backpack and wander free a bit.

Good grief! More rocks.

Boulder field after boulder field is presented as you go on. The creek in flood washes the sand away and leaves the heavy objects behind. I never get very far because I become entranced by the wildlife and spend my time taking photos.

A frog in algae, surrounded by tiny snails. They are New Zealand mudsnails, an invasive species.

Hummingbird and thistle

These are “cow killer” ants, a.k.a. velvet ants. Not ants, they are a species of wingless wasp. They got their name from their sting, one of the most painful in America. The stinger is a quarter-inch long. One reason to take great care if walking barefoot and mind where you sit. Watch out for red ants, too.

Shield bugs mating

As you go around each bend, you see yet another canyon beckoning. Thick brush slows you down.

Coffeeberry tree.

A butterfly, a honeybee and a yellow jacket pollinated the same rabbitbrush.

The bottom has rocks and I was a bit unsteady! There was also some debris floating I had to avoid. The water was COLD. 🥶

There are trout in the water, but it is catch and release.

Spanish broom, a lovely, nonnative invasive.

Dragonflies mating.

Plenty of crawdads (a.k.a. crayfish, a.k.a. freshwater lobster) in this creek. Locals collect them, but they don’t go very far downstream.

Often, you are surrounded by hundreds of feet high vertical cliffs.

A tributary gully, it only has water during the rain.

Western Fence lizards, male & female

A bumblebee on buckwheat

There is no fixed end to the hike. You just go until it is almost halfway through the daylight hours and then turn around. I bring a headlamp, just in case, but it is not a place to hike at night. Every step downstream takes you farther from civilization and closer to the true wild.

This is the end of the story… for now.