Brownside Canyon — It’s all in the name

Hours upon hours star­ing at topo maps look­ing for canyon prospects near home I cam across “Brown Canyon”, labeled such on the topos. It did­n’t look like the squig­gly con­tour lines were com­ing very close togeth­er indi­cat­ing it might not be too tech­ni­cal, that is it might just be a long steep slope with some down-climbs. But wait…there’s a canyon com­ing down the side…and going with what Chris Bren­nan  start­ed in his nam­ing of “Sil­ver On The Side” I fig­ured “Brown­side” would be appropriate.

So on a hot sum­mer morn­ing, Dave Red & I head­ed up the trail and after 3 miles of unre­lent­ing heat we dropped into the canyon, the bush­whack was imme­di­ate. As if the heat and bush­whack­ing was­n’t enough so came the poi­son oak and intro­duced itself, all too hap­py and thriving.

Burned trees and a bushwhack

A few hours lat­er and near the end of the canyon we arrived at the first obsta­cle, a down-climb fol­lowed short­ly by a rap­pel which turned out to be about 120 ft. So much pain and trou­ble for 1 aver­age rap­pel. “Well at least I know what’s in here and don’t have to come back” I kept telling myself through the bushwhack.

The rap­pel, first last and penultimate.

All this time I had no idea that “Brown­side” is a Chi­cano hip-hop group start­ed by Eazy‑E. The more you know.

Debris fence at the end of the Brown Canyon drainage.

Inci­den­tal­ly this turn-out at the bot­tom of Brown Canyon was report­ed­ly the igni­tion point for the infa­mous Sta­tion Fire on August 26th 2009. In the end it burned 160,577 acres and was dev­as­tat­ing to the Ange­les for­est. Every year more burned trees still get washed into the canyons and clog them up with debris. Exit­ing a canyon cov­ered in black marks and black hands from burned trees is all too common.

2009 Sta­tion Fire burn­ing in the Ange­les Front Range.