It’s possible Southern California has never been as wet as it is right this minute.
Waterfalls, swimming holes, rivers, lakes, once-in-a-while creeks, part-time reservoirs; the greener stretches of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have all of these features. Most are more or less visible (and enjoyable) depending on that year’s rainy season.
And this year, two days before the start of spring, all of the region’s natural and unnatural water spots are filled at levels that few local hikers and waterfall watchers and swimming hole enthusiasts (hey, they’re a thing) have ever seen. Two straight years of nearly twice as much rain as usual will do that.
“The water was just flowing,” gushed Toni Perez, a retired business owner and teacher, two days after she took an early March march up to Switzer Falls, a popular waterfall and sometimes swimming hole about 3,200 feet up in the mountains north of Pasadena.
“The waterfall was really full and pretty. And the pool was deep. And somebody put in a swing out there. It was, oh, gosh, it was so beautiful!”
Excuse Perez’s enthusiasm. At 68, the Los Angeles native is two-plus years into a second life of sorts, after receiving a double lung transplant in the summer of 2021. A few weeks after getting the new lungs, she jogged a 5-K and, soon after that, she began a new hobby — hiking in the local mountains.
The recent trip to Switzer Falls was her second in recent months. The first came in late fall, before the year’s rainy season had really kicked into gear. Conditions shifted from moist to aquarium-esque.
“That time, the falls were still there, and so was the pool,” Perez said. “But it wasn’t as nice as it is now. It’s wetter than ever, I think.”
Rain data collected for the Los Angeles area over the past 145 years suggest she’s right.
Though neither of the past two rainy seasons set an all-time, single-season record, the period from 2022 through 2024 might comprise the wettest two-year window in the region’s recorded (weather-wise) history.
Sure, there was a three-year run of rain from 1978 to 1980, but the middle year in that stretch was only about average, rain-wise, so water levels in lakes rivers and creeks seesawed during that period. A similar pattern held during the rainy stretch of 1913 through 1916.
Even the biggest rainy year of the past century, 2004, wasn’t as productive as what we have now. That’s because rain in ’05 was a bit below average (only about 13 inches for the year), and the rainy season of ’06 was one of the driest on record, with just 3.5 inches.
By the spring of 2007, Southern California’s swimming holes and the like were filled with rocks and dust and beer cans, not water.
All of which is why this spring could become a green-country rave in Southern California, with lots of people eager to visit places where they can hike and gawk and splash.
It’s not all good. Not all of the hikers are smart, so some will leave litter in their wake. They’ll also bring pets, which are fine on leash but less-than-fine when they go (emphasis on go) off-leash, where they tend to pollute fresh water.
Still, even some people who go into the region’s wild urban spots every year, rain or drought, seem willing to accept that so much water — and so much beauty — is something lots of people should experience.
“It’s a boom and bust cycle in Southern California; season-by-season and year-by-year, because of rainfall,” said Casey Schreiner, a Los Angeles-based writer (“Day Hiking: Los Angeles” and “Discovering Griffith Park”) and TV producer who co-founded ModernHiker.com
“So, given what we have right now, let’s enjoy the green and the water,” he added. “The region is beautiful with or without rain. But it’s really cool when it’s as wet as it is.
“Everything is different.”
But where?
Schreiner, among others, said there are dozens of spots you can swim or at least wade into within a short-ish drive of the centers of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The non-nasty, still-wild parts of the region’s three big rivers — Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Ana — are flowing right now. And the region’s roughly dozen big lakes are full. Even seasonal creeks in places such as Malibu and central Orange County are flowing right now.
For a list of some of the region’s best swimming holes, check out California.com. For information about Southern California lakes, check out this list from OnlyInYourState.com. And for waterfalls (some of which are on the swimming hole list) check out WorldOfWaterfalls.com. Other sources with great information about fresh water junkets in Southern California include ModernHiker.com, SoCalHiker.com and local Reddit threads, among others.
But finding a destination is just part of the deal. You’ve got to plan, too. And that plan boils down to asking yourself a lot of hiking-related questions that, if you don’t hike all the time, might not be obvious.
Do you need a permit? You might if you want to hike to a water spot in any of the local national forests, Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres or San Bernardino. (To find out how to get one, go to the U.S. Forest Service website, or put “Adventure Pass” into Google, to find an outdoors-oriented retailer that sells them.)
Will the hike to your water spot be viable for everybody in your crew? (A lot of the wettest spots are remote, and getting there requires a bit of climbing and crossing some extra-wet creeks.) Do you have extra clothes with you in case you get wet? (Hiking any distance in wet clothes/shoes is less than pleasant; bring extras of both.) Do you have a backpack to carry your garbage — including animal waste — out of the natural place you’ve just visited? (If you don’t, don’t go.)
Do you have water? Snacks? Hat? Sun protection? Bug spray? All are essential, or close to it.
Newbie hiker Perez, who likes to walk with Osito, a rescue mix she believes is about 5 years old, said every water visit she’s made to date has been worth any and all planning hassles.
“When I get there, and I see the stream, and walk along the water, covered by the shade from the trees and the mountains, I think ‘Oh my God, what a feeling.’
“I know that sounds corny,” she added. “But it’s true. There’s something about everything being so wet. It gets you.”
