Sometimes you need to go exploring without the worry of how many miles or how much elevation you will get in a day. I love where I live because the mountains around us have big challenging day hikes, backpacking, and a ton of small nature trails and walking trails that lead to really beautiful sites.
One of my favorite places is San Antonio Falls on Mt. Baldy. While these falls are often seen on the way to some much larger and more challenging hikes in the area (the ski hut trail for example). I also love that if you don't want to do any major hiking, you can walk a road to them and get there in 15-30 minutes depending on your level of fitness.
When looking up this trail, it is not the 10.4 mile loop named "San Antonio Falls Trail." This is instead about .6 miles on paved road and then a little bit of a trail to take you down to the actual falls. The time of year really changes how these falls look. There is still ice and snow melt at the top of Baldy right now (though very little) so there was a decent amount of water. Sometimes these falls can be raging, sometimes they are a trickle.
When driving up Mt. Baldy Road, you should see a sign pointing out where to park for the falls on your left. You park, walk the road, and once you get to where you can see the falls you will see a small trail leading down. You can walk up right to the base of the falls where it feeds the small creek that runs down Mt. Baldy. Waterproof shoes come in handy here but the trail itself is easy enough that you could probably do this trail in something other than boots.
The views are gorgeous and again, the time of year and how much snowfall there has been can dramatically change how the falls and the creek look.
Getting outdoors doesn't always need to be peak bagging or strenuous hikes, a lot of times the best days outdoors are the ones where you just get to relax and soak in your surroundings. I say this, but of course this little hike made me immediately want to plan our summit of Baldy for the summer.
xoxo,
kat
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