Bear Creek Backpacking with Jackson

- July 01, 2015

This is post I put on a hiking site about how our trip went.

July 19th & 20th 2015 - Angeles National Forest

What an adventure Jackson (9) and I hiked Bear Canyon Trail thur Switzer Falls on July 19th, 2015 with Keri and Evan (9) this would be the boys first overnight backpacking trip. We got to Bear Canyon Campground around 4:00pm setup camp and cooked our dinner. Around 6:00pm the rain started coming down we quickly got in our tents and settled in. We heard a thundering sound coming from the river I looked out the small window to see a flash flood of water coming down the river toppling over trees and plants. This lasted for about an hour then turned into a small storm with the river finally going down but not passable. The night passed with falling rocks coming off the mountain side and dead tree limbs crashing in the forest. The next morning about 6am we quickly ate and checked for a little bit of blue sky so we could hike back out without the risk of another flash flood. We we're so shocked to see how bad the trail was at some sections we had to removed our backpacks and climb over and under fallen trees. Some sections where you hike up the ridge the trail was washed out. About 30 minutes into the hike we heard people talking it was our husbands and a couple of other family members that had hiked in at 3am to find us. Come to find out a fellow hike we ran into the day before had informed the fire station that two women and two kids may be in trouble and were hiking to the Bear Canyon Campground. So Search and Rescue was contacted and Police were sent to our houses. We never ran into anyone from search and rescue but were happy to see our family and have more people to enjoy the trail with.