Its true what they say: sometimes the unexpected surprises are the best. Although I live a few miles from the Santa Ana Mountains, I haven’t explored them nearly enough. The Santa Anas are one of the peninsular mountain ranges in southern California, and while they are a coastal range, they are far enough inland to get quite dry and hot during the summer months.
One of the things I love about this range is all of the waterfalls and cascades. Not nearly on par with anything you might find in Yosemite, these little rivulets are quite charming, and each is a little bit different. Last year, I spent some time with San Juan Falls, one of the easier falls to access. This past week, Marc Perkins and I headed back to the Santa Anas to look for another waterfall.
Upper Hot Springs is another small stream, and the falls cascade about 30 feet over some very colorful rocks. Last year, I attempted to hike to this area, but was turned around because of dense poison oak. Last week, the trail was much more easy to find, and we found the falls with no problems. In contrast to the oak and sycamore environment of the stream bed, the area around the falls was covered in succulent plants (whose name I do not know).
Upper Hot Springs
As far as I could tell, the falls don’t live up to their name in that the water wasn’t especially hot. Oh well. It wasn’t the best day for a soak in hot springs anyway!
I hope you enjoy the image; you can see the rest of my images from the Santa Ana Mountains here.
I don’t mind repeating myself…this looks great Greg. Lots of nice color, good choice of shutter speed for the water and the fg looks just right.
I agree, a really lovely image… you say they are hot and dry in the summer, what’s it like in the winter here? Do they get any snow?
Love seeing your tales from the SW…
Thanks Ali! The winters here are very mild, for the most part. A really strong Arctic storm might drop a few inches of snow that melt rapidly, but for the most part, days are usually in the 40s or 50s, with freezing nights. Rain storms can drop a lot of rain on these coastal ranges though.
Awesome! This is an amazing shot.
I have been to the Santa Ana mountains many times, sadly I have NEVER seen a waterfall 🙁 They are always dried up!
Maybe I’ll try again this weekend.
Every falls we visited last week was flowing, so you should definitely go this weekend!! San Juan Falls and this one are definitely better in the morning, so go then…
Great image Greg. It was worth the second trip.
Best Regards,
Greg…..
Thanks for all the comments, guys! I’m glad you like it.
This must be a beautiful print. I am impressed with your control of light here – there is just enough light on the foreground rocks to bring out their texture without letting them dominate the scene.
Sharon
Thank you Sharon! The 5D Mark II has an impressive ability to handle high dynamic range scenes, but I did double process this RAW image to get a little more detail into the scene.