Sisterly Love

View from inside the third Sister

Samuel Johnson told Boswell, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” I’m not sure if the same can be said of San Diego County, but after all this time it still surprises me.

Case in point: I finally made it to the Three Sisters waterfalls the other day. Jerry Schad, whose Afoot & Afield in San Diego County is the Bible for local hikers, calls this “an amazing San Diego County feature not many have seen.” I’d wanted to get there for years, but the site is remote (perhaps a half hour outside Julian) and challenging. When Steve and I heard that some hardy friends were going, we asked if we could tag along, and they welcomed us.

Noting that Schad says it’s a four-mile round trip, we wondered how it could be very difficult. The journey to the falls is all downhill – first a gentle incline, and then a precipitous one down a dusty, slippery trail, including one 20-foot drop that requires a rope descent.

Scattered clouds tempered the morning’s warmth. Toward the bottom of the canyon, the rush of running water was a soothing soundtrack as we boulder-hopped and squeezed past thicket after thicket of poison oak. The payoff was huge. Even in mid-July, the first set of pools was Edenic – filled knee-deep with coolly refreshing water.

The first sister

 I could have happily stopped there, but as others climbed to the “middle sister,” I followed and was glad I did and glad to follow to the uppermost cataract. I later realized that Schad calls it “difficult and dangerous” to proceed to that last one. It’s just as well I didn’t know it at the time, or I might have missed out on that magical grotto and cascading water and ecstatic lounging.

If we could have been choppered out from there, nothing would have marred the idyll. Instead we had to climb in heat that by mid-afternoon had become hellish. All the clouds had vanished, and Steve and I stupidly came close to passing out from the heat. (At last we’ve learned our lesson about hydration in the wilderness.)

The second sister

The third sister

Amazingly deep pool at the base of the third sister

But we all made it back with only minor scrapes (and no oaky poisoning, perhaps thanks to the wonders of Tecnu).  I hope to return sometime, maybe in the spring when the water is even higher, wilder. Getting there, lazing there, was like being let in on a wondrous secret.

Schad has written about the hike not only for his book but also for the Reader’s Roam-a-Rama column. Here’s a link to the directions he provided there in 2008.