East Canyon Photos

Here are various pictures taken in East Canyon

Hear is a view looking north down East Canyon

Looking north down the road

The hike into East Canyon is pleasant with lots of shade. Soon, however, it starts to winds up the canyon floor and eventually joins the Weldon Parkway after an elevation gain of about 800 feet.

Hikers and bikers are plentiful on the road

Single oak near the top of the road

The oak provides a nice place to rest with nice views of the Pico Anticline to the west. The flat area below the oak was the site of the San Marino Oil Company Number 1 oil well drilled and abandoned in 1964. (It is considered a Rice Canyon well I guess because it's on the Rice Canyon side of the ridge.)

You can see the oak far in the distance looking west from inside the canyon

View looking east. The Mendota well site is in the bottom left-center of the photo. The brush blocks the view of the actual site.

Another view of the canyon looking east

There are some pools in the upper part of East Canyon. This one seems to have a little oil on the surface.

Poison oak is common in the canyon bottom

In the area of the Occidental oil well, there is an extensive system (hundreds of feet) of PVC pipes for sprinklers. There is also a few tanks, including this one. There are many young oak trees that were being watered. These oaks were going to be used to replace oaks that were removed because of a planned landfill in either Towsley or Elsmere Canyon. Since the landfill never happened, the sprinkler system was abandoned. (At least this is what an MRCA ranger told me.)

Walnut tree

Deep up the canyon

I smelled this before I saw it. My first thought was that if it was killed by an animal, then that animal must have been a mountain lion, a nice thought since I was hiking alone.

Alligator lizard on road out of East/Rice Canyon