Santiago Creek Bike Trail, 9/20/2025

Last Saturday, a prior engagement kept me from the trail. I know, I know: one week hiking, then one week off, is Not Good for building trail legs! But consequently this week, instead of building to a tougher hike, I stayed mild, with the Santiago Creek Bike Trail. Specifically, starting out by Santiago Oaks Park (in Orange), I followed it west to its end at the 5 (by the Discovery Cube in Santa Ana), crossed the 5, then continued on to the Santa Ana River (by Edna Park). Just 10 miles, over fairly flat terrain. Some complications: as a bike path, it’s paved so it’s harder on the legs, and I hiked it in the afternoon at the height of the heat. But still, a pretty mild route.

Where I picked it up--in the residential sprawl by Cannon Street and Taft Avenue--Santiago Creek Bike Trail actually departs its namesake. This is because Santiago Creek flows into a Recharging Basin here: a series of monumental manmade pits, cratering the neighborhood, about 3 stories down to water’s surface. While the creek flows through, the trail goes around, following roads in a rectilinear circumvention of the basin. The basin feels distinctly natural: although its slopes are cut to human angles, it’s still a massive structure made from compacted dirt and sun-stale water (the fact that the latter only filled the very bottom made the pit feel that much bigger). It reminded me that, though we may have mastered our environments--these beautiful tilt-shifted homes surrounding the Basin, filled with the newest conveniences, controlled by the latest technologies--there is still something out there more fundamental and just plain bigger, than us.

My only issue: the trail never afforded a good view! It was always too far from the edge, and kept that way by a fence. I was perpetually looking right, craning my neck and hoping, but never got close enough to fully savor the vastness. There was a consolation prize: several plants lined the basin side of the trail here, including ones I recognized from wilderness! Buckwheat bushes--a staple--the flowers already red and dry, starting to crinkle. Pea plants (silver senna, specifically), the long pods already brown and desiccated, dark against the luminous leaves. Squat agaves sprawled across the ground, mostly ripe with water, but with some brittled fronds now crinkling in yellow and orange. Rosemary, in bloom with its columns of purple penta-flowerlets, bee-beloved. Ah, but it was like encountering friends from back home while traveling abroad!

After circumscribing the Basin, the trail rejoins Santiago Creek. Now, though, the creek is channelized. a wide concrete waterway, broad concrete bottom, 45-degree concrete banks, bright with urban albedo. Every now and then, a tube would be drilled into the bank, an outflow collecting the storm drains above. And, amazingly, there were plants growing from that outflow trickle. And not on the level lips of the opening, but rather below, on the slanted bank, on pure concrete! Full-sized clumps of grasses, sporting swaying cattails. The green algae spreading across the lingering pools down in the channel I expected, but grasses growing on--not through, but *on*--manmade stone, I did not!

The full channelization continued about a mile until, at a bridge, the concrete ended and natural banks reappeared. And suddenly, the course of the creek became ambiguous: as wide and deep, but now with multiple braids fashioned within it, all vying for favor. Tall dark trees sprouted along the shore, brushy grasses crowded the banks-between-the-braids below, their combined shade and green cutting down the albedo. Instead of a perpetual, clean line, the creek became a host of tendencies: places the water could go, places where the trees and bushes could grow, places where mud and rock could gunk, but each rainy season would have to work through the choices itself. The philosophers say you can’t ever step in the same river twice, but in the channelized creek you’d be forgiven for thinking this was because the water was always different. In this natural section, you realize it’s the creek itself--its bed, its banks, where it pools and where it flows--that changes.

From here the bike trail followed the creek sometimes on this side, sometimes on that, all the way to Hart Park. Sometimes the creek was natural, sometimes manmade, usually a mix: a section with concrete banks but natural creekbed, a section where all was natural but large concrete steps across the creekbed managed erosion. In one section, while the paved bike trail followed the upper bank, a lower dirt path stayed closer to the water. Of course, I took the latter. The lower banks were of brushed concrete, but I could see where the water from the creek was beginning to undercut those banks--digging trenches maybe 6 inches deep at their bases, threatening to hollow underneath. To my trail-work eyes, it looked scary, the beginnings of inevitable collapse. Water is destructive, and our efforts can only hold it back for only so long!

Hart Park as the next major landmark. The trail split it in two: a south side of empty baseball diamonds, pristine and clean in grass and bleacher, but deadened by upright placards declaring “Field Closed”. While on the north side, the parties were going! Families mostly, gathered at the picnic tables, blaring music full of guitars and horns, the smell of chicken on the grill. Kids running around, adults seated and chatting, and in the parking lot, cars circling trying to find a spot. Maybe the day’s games had finished and everyone had retired to the shaded picnic benches on the other side of the park? I certainly hoped so! I admit that humans are messy, but the prestiged ball fields, in their untouchable greens and silvers, struck me as morbidly unnatural.

Hart Park heralded another change in the creek: the beginning of an intentional section. Creeks in LA are almost always interstitial spaces: the things you pass on your way to something else. At most, they form a convenient place to walk your dog, or kids to ride their bikes. But perpetually incidental. Yet after Hart Park, the creek became a directed space. There was an archery range tucked between the creek and an overpass, and then the path was lined with informational placards educating about vernal pools and watersheds and nocturnal versus diurnal. No longer was it a place you might happen upon and enjoy, but it became a designed place, intended to be enjoyed. Increasingly surrounded by city as it headed downtown, but even that was designed: the trees became bigger and denser, obscuring the buildings and muffling the traffic just above.

This was also where the Santiago Creek Bike Trail comes to an end, at Highway 5. Only today, it ended early. Normally the trail crosses a bridge, then passes through a playground and a little park to reach its natural conclusion. But for some reason, all that was fenced off! And by fancy fencing that left a piecewise linear corridor to the playground, which was itself fully enclosed. A dad and his young son were playing in the park, so I didn’t think it appropriate to climb the fence. Instead, I went back, and then left the trail, ascending out of the creek, passing under a shading tree, and emerging onto Memory Lane.

Thus ended the “pretty” part of the hike, tantalizing close to its natural end. Ah well, so it goes!

All that was left was truly urban walking to the Santa Ana River (to join this hike to the Network). In this case, that meant a lot of sidewalks and waiting at stoplights. Only I got impatient and while waiting to cross-and-turn-on Broadway, saw a little trail heading off to the side that maybe did the same thing, but under the overpass? No stoplights there! So I took it. It lead to a space under a roof of overpasses and over a basement of a managed Santiago Creek, and seemingly still under construction. A broad, paved route, but definitely not heavily trafficked. I passed a couple folks lolling by the side, seemingly wacked out, possibly homeless, before crossing over Santiago Creek and turning upstream--right to the fenced off portion from the playground. So the other side of a dead end. Well, nuts. But I wasn’t going back, so nothing for it but to clamber off-trail up the steep tan-barked bank of the creek--not without some slipping and sliding--and emerge unceremoniously on the side of Main Street--not even Broadway!--next to cars waiting at the light. 

Well, that’s what I get for having Ideas!

From there, it was just streets--first bigger, downtown ones, then smaller, neighborhood ones--as I got to, then walked along, Santa Clara Avenue all the way (more or less) to the Santa Ana River. I crossed the river near Riverview Park (which had more empty baseball diamonds, made all the more lonely by the lively red-white-and-blue bunting flapping in the breeze), to Edna Park on the other side. Where I ended my hike and called up a Lyft to take me back!

To be fair, there was one interesting part of the route during this urban walking (as opposed to something caused by my own impulsiveness): crossing over Highway 5. I did so on Main Street, and looking down from the overpass, it reminded me of the concretized, channelized Santiago Creek, just writ much larger and deeper, and flowing with zooming pellets of cars instead of water. Multiple braids--lanes--but they never crossed, even though there was no physical barrier between them. Which felt instinctively wrong. The more natural sections of Santiago Creek also had multiple braids, but they had been separated by sandbanks, or lines of vegetation, or entire islands. Physical separations. Whereas here, there was nothing of the sort--the sheer flatness of the bottom of this channel was stunning. Nothing separated the lines of cars, except these white lines painted, almost arbitrarily, on the ground. To my creek-channel mind, the fact that those lines work was incredible to the point of almost inconceivable.

And that was the hike!

Toward the end, walking the sidewalks through a neighborhood of single-family homes, I did notice some weakness in my joints. Almost like the onset of a flu. I’m not sure if this indicated flagging endurance, or was simply an after-effect of the COVID shot I’d gotten the day before. I also felt inordinately hungry: broke out my apple, ate it all. On day-hikes, I usually don’t get hungry, in fact, I typically eat very little. But I suddenly got hungry, not quite thru-hiker hiker-hunger, but close. Which was very strange. Aside from those two (admittedly minor) issues, though, I felt pretty good. It was indeed a very mild hike: not much adventure, not much difficulty, just start walking and keep walking until you get to the end. A good followup to a fallow week, keeping in that easing back mode. And mentally, some interesting sights, some fun observations--as there always are in these places where civilization deigns to let nature flow, so long as nature can be easily ignored!

Some notes:

-- Cannon Street > Santiago Creek Bike Trail > Grijalva Park (and bridge) > Hart Park > Santiago Park > Memory Lane > Santiago Creek Trail > Main Street > Highway 5 > Santa Clara Avenue > Alona Street > 21st Street > Riverview Park > Santa Ana River (and bridge) > Edna Park

-- There’s an official parking lot for the Santiago Creek Bike Trail off Cannon Street, but it was cramped by the cell tower they were building in the lot. The staging materials were still there, including two big piles of plastic branches, complete with fake leaves, waiting to “naturalize” the tower. Strange to see “leaves” so monotonous and repeatable, and so twitchy and stiff!

-- At the end of the Basin, where the trail comes to the concretized channel of Santiago Creek, I saw a guy running on the opposite bank. Completely exposed, in the afternoon sun, up a long concrete ramp. He wasn’t running fast, and even to my undiscerning eye his form leaned more amateur than professional, but he was going, and uphill. He got to the top and didn’t stop, but just turned around and headed back. And I admit, though he looked awkward and out of his element, I was impressed. There’s something to be said for sheer will, of deciding to do something and then going out and doing it, in tough conditions (accepting the difficulty head on), and without skill or training (saying to hell with the embarrassment). That’s what he looked to be doing, and it was certainly more impressive than my walking this “mild” route, let me tell you!

-- There is one perk of urban walking. At the first stoplight, over Main Street, I waited for the “Walk Sign is On Across” message, and when I got it, nonetheless looked to my left. When crossing a road, I always like to make eye contact with the drivers, to make sure they know I’m here, and I know they’re there. This time, there was a motorist at the light, right-turn blinker on. But she let me cross first. Even gave me a little wave when I made eye contact. That was nice.

-- My Sony RX100, mark 7--fresh from the repair shop!--has an internal intervalometer, so I broke out my three-trekking-pole tripod. Then, after the shot, slipped it into my “rifle-carry”: I feed it cross-chest under my daypack shoulder strap, then twist it so it stands vertically, the poles resting in the little nook between the ball of my shoulder and the (rather flat) mass of my pectoral. And promptly felt claustrophobic, with the pole grips hovering near my face. The feeling subsided quickly enough, but nonetheless lingered the rest of the day. Ah, but just another sign that I’ve been away too long!