Hiking the Punch Bowl

The hour-long drive from the San Fernando Valley to the hiking trail was confusing, because it took us through mountains and on several highways instead of one freeway. It was also hard to figure out where the trail began, and when we accidentally wandered onto private property, we were yelled at. Apparently hikers often trespass in that area since specific directions to the trailhead are nowhere to be found online.

Luckily, we were trailing behind another hiking group and followed them through some of the obscure parts of the hike. Even though the trail is marked with brown posts, they are hard to find in the rocky parts, since the trail isn’t a continuous dirt path. The first 45 minutes of the hike follow Santa Paula Creek, but we had to jump over rocks to cross the creek back and forth a few times in places where the trail was cut off by trees or steep rock.

It was hot and there wasn’t much shade for the first part of the hike along the creek, but we could see evergreens on the mountains surrounding us. We used walking sticks to balance ourselves as we walked over the creek and we had to climb over rocks often. But the hardest parts of the hike were the places where the trail turned into soft desert sand with no shade because we had to look down to see where we were walking. We commented to each other that this wasn’t a hike for beginners. We stopped at a rock that looked exactly like a miniature of the cave in The Lion King. I climbed on, held up a small rock and sang The Lion King song, expecting everyone to bow to my rock Simba.

We took a break to eat protein bars and trail mix and watch a huge, beautiful blue crane in the creek before beginning the second part of the hike. To the right of the creek, a brown post told us to veer away from the creek and head up the mountain. We took switchbacks up through trees and came to a steep ravine where ropes were hanging to help hikers climb up to the trail on the other side without falling.

Luckily, it wasn’t nearly as difficult as it looked because the ropes supported us and the trail wasn’t very steep. We continued on the mountain until the trail headed down into a lush area full of green trees. We saw a pitiful splatter of water over a few rocks. Where were the pools and waterfalls we’d read about?

We abandoned our trail and came to the most intense part of the hike where we had to sneak along the rocks that steeply bordered the creek. We saw an orange tie in a tree—a sign that we were heading in the right direction. After maneuvering around the rocks, we saw the famous Punch Bowl. It was the size of a large swimming pool, 15 feet deep, clear enough to see the bottom and surrounded by colorful dragonflies. A 25-foot waterfall splashed into the Punch Bowl, and the rock cavern around the pool had ropes for climbing up the highest nooks and jumping off into the pool. It was paradise after our hot hike. We swam in the shockingly cold water for at least an hour, sliding down the waterfall into the pool, climbing the rocks and sunbathing. Unfortunately, the Punch Bowl was tagged everywhere and strewn with plastic wrappers, beer bottles and even socks!

The hike home went quickly since we now knew where we were going, but we hadn’t brought enough water with us and we all started to feel dehydrated. We had heard from the other visitors that beyond the Punch Bowl there were several more pools that were even deeper and had rock waterslides, but we were too thirsty to continue our exploring and decided to save the rest of the pools for our next hike.