San Cristobal Canyon

Today we were headed to San Cristobol Canyon. We went south on 52 and got off on 1. We followed the scenic route and got off at 162. We tried to follow the poor directions in the book and I called on of the numbers which didn’t really get us anywhere. We figured out what the book meant and were soon at the “troll’s” house. The guidebook had said the owner of the trailhead was a real troll. He did look kind of troll-ish but he was a nice guy. He let us park in front of his house and showed us the trail. We geared up and hiked down into the canyon. As we hiked through his field we caught a view of the canyon and a glimpse of a waterfall. We hiked down the eroded trail to the base of the canyon. The guidebook said the trail was really steep and turned to mush making it impossible to climb back up if it rained. Whoever wrote the guidebook is a pussy. All the locals also told us it was too dangerous to go into the canyon. When we got to the canyon bottom we hoped rocks across the river and went upstream to a 100’ waterfall named Cascada la Nabina. We took many pictures and headed downstream. Marion and I kept our feet dry for awhile. Some of the rocks were very slick. I got my feet wet to pose for a picture. We soon reached another waterfall. It looked like we needed to rig a rope so Alan traversed out to the edge of the waterfall and then came back to traverse over to the other side. He rigged the rope and realized we didn’t need it. We climbed down and hiked along the canon to the next waterfall where we had to follow a trail up the side of the valley. It was rather steep going up. We rigged a rope and rappelled down into the river a couple hundred feet away from the waterfall. We continued downstream climbing over some boulders and climbing down a steep slope to another short climb. We could see that we couldn’t’ keep going this way and went back up and followed the trail further. It soon started going downhill. The trail was really steep. I dropped us back down to the river. We hopped boulders across the stream a couple more times, climbed up and over and down and around and came to an area overlooking a deep pool. Alan found a neat caterpillar and then swam across and disappeared downstream. I took some pictures and also swam across and climbed down, traversed, and swam until I got to the first waterfall. A small amount of water spread out and gently flowed down a often mossy flowstone-like slope about 100’ high. I then did a rather hairy climb down and swam across to the base of the “500” foot waterfall. I climbed up to where Alan was taking pictures and then climbed up higher to get my picture taken. We then quickly routed back out of the canyon.