Wickham Canyon Photos

These photos were taken on 12/20/2008 and 12/24/2008 (when it was cloudy).

At the mouth of Wickham Canyon is a fence with a locked gate. There are two signs to keep people away. There is a man living in the first trailer.

Probably the only danger is from stepping on the junk on this property. I do not know how far back into the canyon is private property.

A look at the property at the mouth (view north). Some tractors, trailers, and a broken, graffiti covered mobile home. There is a lot of junk in the area.

This is the last of the junk as we get a little deeper into the canyon. Thankfully, even though the owner of the property has complete access to the canyon up to the Wickham home site, as far as I can tell, he has not dumped anything into the canyon past this point.

The road up the canyon is in good shape and could be used by a passenger car. The creek is always on the right (west) side of the road as you travel south up the canyon.

A little further up the road looking north

Here's an old gate

The creek bed is dry here, but past the Wickham home site there is some flowing water.

Evidently at one time this pipe ran all the way into the canyon past the home site

Along the road there are a couple of turnouts into flat areas. This turnout had a lot of bricks in it.

On the ridge before reaching the home site are sets of man-made rockwork like this

Wickham home site area

Platform in tree on the left (east) as you enter homesite area

Stone work and tank on the right (west) on the other side of the creek bed

On the tank side of the creek bed looking at the tree with the platform in the distance

Closer view of tank

Here is a pomegranate tree, obviously planted by the Wickhams

Here's that pipe again at the home site

This tree had two pipes going directly through it

Remains of a fence

The pipe keeps going past the home site. Here it's in the creek bed.

Around here I found this large nail

Looking up you can see Sand Rock Peak in the distance. In the lower left center of the photo, the creek narrows. This is a a few hundred yards past the home site.

As the canyon narrows, there are these interesting erosional features higher up on the west side

This is as far as I could get. The canyon is very narrow here and there is a waterfall below the picture that blocks the creek bed. The west (right) side is deeply eroded sandstone.

The east (left) side is sandstone and this conglomerate

Coming back from the Wickham home site, there is a road to the west that goes over the creek bed over this pipe here. It zigzags up the a ridge to the Cormac Number 1 well site just below Sand Rock Peak (see the Oil webpage).

Looking up at Sand Rock Peak with an elevation of 2511 feet. The road goes up there. A large portion of the road has been destroyed by landslides so at one point I had to hike straight up a ridge to get to the well site.

On the road is this object which says Martin and Schwartz, Buffalo, N.Y.

Clearer view of the peak. I was too tired to attempt a climb to the top.

Looking down on the Cormac well site in the foreground and the Santa Clarita Valley in the background. There is snow on the peaks in the distance (photo taken on 12/20/08).

This is the western tributary of Wickham Canyon looking northeast from the southern side a little below the previous photo

This is the same western tributary looking east

This interesting shot is of the end of the western tributary looking west toward Pico Canyon. The high point on the right is where the previous photo was taken from. This photo shows the steep beds of the north flank (although the camera angle makes it look like the south flank) of the Pico Anticline. The more resistant beds erode slower so they stick out more.

Looking down at the mouth of Wickham Canyon with Pico Canyon Road in the distance. The housing tract on the right center is the Southern Oaks tract.