Hike to Heart Rock

June 1, 2011 

Many times, my friends and I like to travel into the mountains, to explore, hang out, and to cool down from the hot summer heat.  One of the most popular places to visit has been the Big Falls, in Forest Falls.  I had an idea to take some of my friends to a new place, a place that they have never heard of.  This place, I had learned from being at the Los Angeles/San Bernardino County 4-H Summer Camp at Camp Seeley in Crestline.  This place would be a natural swimming hole, and Heart Rock, located on Seeley Creek.  In the end, my friends Jane and Tricia went on the hike with me.

We drove up to the Seeley Creek Trail Head.  It can be difficult to find to those who have not been there before.  You drive up the 18, then take the 138 towards Crestline.  You want to continue on the 138, and not go into the town of Crestline.  On the 138, you will grive into the valley of enchantment, which is the back side of Crestline.  On the left hand side, you will see a large sign that says Camp Seeley.  You turn there, but stay to a small road to the left, and don't go into the camp.  From there you can drive the small road till you come to a closed gate.  Park there.  To the east of the parking lot, you should see the beginnings of a trail.  That is the Seeley Creek Trail.  We started on our hike, and my plan was to first take them to the swimming hole, then walk up creek to the little waterfall, then climb up the side of the fall to were we can see Heart Rock.  As I hike, I tend to look around my surroundings, for you never know what you may see.  Right away, I spotted many lady bugs, that were chilling on a bush.  This time of year, the mountains have very big populations of lady bugs, for they all hatch in the late spring.  We stopped to look, and of course take photos, then we continued on to the swimming hole. The trail takes you along the ridge, while you have the creek below.  At one point, there is a fork in the trail, and if you went right on the fork, you would be at the overlook where you can see Heart Rock.  That is where most people stop, but I took Jane and Tricia to the left on the fork down the trail about 300 more feet, not telling them that we had passed Heart Rock. 

     Past the overlook, going to the left of the fork down the trail, and to the right hand side, you will notice a steep slop, well traveled by people, down to the creek.  At the bottom of the steep hill is the natural swimming hole, created by fallen trees.  I started down the steep hill, and I heard Jane and Tricia start getting worried and questioning going down.  I told them to go slow, and if they felt safer, they could sit and slide down the hill.  I got down to the swimming hole ahead of them, and ended up waiting while they slowly got down.  When they got down, they looked around, and saw that the swimming hole was a very nice a beautiful place to hang out.  The creek was full of water, more than normal for the summer, but our mountains had been pounded with snow all the way till the end of March this year, so I wasn't surprised.  We sat on the rocks that the water flows over, that causes a natural slide, and eat our lunch and enjoyed nature.  I looked into one of the cracks in the rocks were water was flowing in, and spotted three small fish swimming.  This would be the first time I had ever spotted fish in the creek.  

After spending around 45 minutes enjoying the swimming hole, it was time to head up creek to the waterfall.  Because of the amount of water in the creek, it was harder to get up to the waterfall than what it has in my past hiking trips to this area.  I at first tried not to get wet while crossing the creek, but in the end, I said screw it and just walked through the creek.  Jane and Tricia on the other hand didn't want to get wet at all, so it took them a little longer to get around.  Tricia was so not wanting to get wet, and scared jumping from rocks to rocks, that she had found a wood board, and put that across a part of the creek.  Of course, she sat on the wet board and pushed her way across.  We had finally got to the waterfall, and we looked and took photos for a little bit before we continued on the adventure.  If you look to the photo on the left, you will see how it looks like there is a hole to the left of the waterfall.  That just happens to be Heart Rock.

     To continue from the waterfall, we went to the left of the rock, and climbed a steep path to get to the top of the waterfall.  We had to climb and go under a tree that had fallen years ago.  We finally got to the top, and then we had to walk across the creek one last time.  I got close to the edge of were the waterfall to look down at the view of the creek.  We continued on.  Once we crossed the creek, we had to climb up a kinda steep path to get out of the creek area.  A very large bush of Poison Oak was right next to the path, so I really had to make sure that noone was going to touch it.  We climbed out of the creek area, and we were officially at the Heart Rock overlook, the one I talked about earlier in the blog.  From there, we saw the view of the waterfall, and a large hole, created by water erosion, that was shaped as a heart.  This is called Heart Rock.  After the photo taking, and looking, it was time to take the half mile hike back to the car, for Tricia had to get down the mountain because she had work in the late afternoon. 

We first drove to the Mc Donalds in Crestline for a cool beverage and snack.  Well I had a snack, the girls just had drinks.  Then we headed on back to the 18 to drive down the mountain, and head back in Highland.  We only went about 3 miles down the 18, when traffic came to a stop, and we had noticed that no cars were coming up the mountains on the other side.  This had meant there was an accident, because I know there was no road work going on at the time.  After a few mins, a county car drove up, and the driver was yelling out that it was a five car head on accident, blocking the entire road.  This meant it could be some time before the road is open to traffic.  We started talking about going back into town and waiting, or we could try to drive to Lake Silverwood in Cajon Pass, on the 138 and get home that way.  We pulled out of the traffic, and went into a turn out on the other side of the road to see if we can see anything.  We saw the corner where the accident had happened and the amount of cars on the road, but couldn't see the official damage.    After about an hour, traffic had began to move.  They had opened up one lane on each side.  We waiting for the traffic to clear up for room, but it seemed to take forever, so I drove up the 18, and turned around to head back down the hill.  We saw some of the cars from the accident, and some were smashed up so badly, it seemed nothing was left.  Most likely caused by people driving too fast on the mountain road.  We had finally got down the mountain, and Tricia got to work right at on time.