After my last trip to the Santa Ana River I decided to come back to explore some more and campout overnight and try to do some trout fishing.

So I headed back up to the backside of the Seven Oaks Dam and drove up the dirt road to the locked gate. I parked there, tossed on my backpack, and started hiking up the road. About a mile or so in I got to the Edison hydro-electric plant. I stopped and took a quick walk around to check it out. It all looked old and rather unmaintained. From the plant I started climbing up the high trail that climbs up high on the north side of the canyon and follows along the flume that feeds the water to the power plant. The views looking over the canyon from up high were awesome, but there was very little shade and the sun was cooking me!

Overlooking the Edison Power Plant

Views from the high trail

Following just below the Edison flume

At one point I ran into a couple of rattlesnakes that were all curled up around each other. I'm thinking maybe they were mating but I'm not sure. I've never seen two rattlers together like that before. I left them alone and continued along the trail. But then as it came into an unnamed gulch the trail suddenly ended! I was expecting (foolishly due to a lack of proper research) the trail to continue following the flume all the way back to where it meets the river. I thought about continuing along the hill off trail, but the terrain looked brutally rugged. So I decided instead to try to descend the gulch directly down to the river. I was a little worried I might get cliffed out, but I didn't and all I really had to deal with was a little bushwhacking. I got down to the river and hiked upstream a bit and I found a nice little sandy beach along the river where I stopped and setup my camp. After camp was setup I hiked around and tried a little fishing in the river, but unfortunately I wasn't able to catch anything. But I still enjoyed a nice dinner and a beautiful evening in the mountains.

The end of the high trail

Back down by the river

My camp

Sunset on the hills above my camp

The next morning I got up early. I decided to pull out my fishing pole first thing... and I caught my first trout of the trip right there in front of my camp! That got me excited for the rest of the day. After some breakfast I packed up my camp and started hiking down the river fishing all the little pools along the river. It was a beautiful day to be out there and I hooked up trout after trout! Eventually I got back to the Edison Plant. I put my pole away and hiked the last mile or so back down the road to the locked gate where I parked. When I got there I saw two mountain bikers. They came over to talk to me and told me they had gotten lost and weren't sure which way to go to get out of the canyon. So I let them hop in my truck and gave them a ride back out to highway 38 where they could arrange to get picked up. They were nice guys, but the lesson they had to learn is that you can't rely on a map that requires you to have cell phone signal if you want to travel out deep into the mountains. As great as all this new technology is, you can't beat a good old fashioned paper map!