Cottonwood Creek Falls

Cottonwood Creek Falls was a series of small waterfalls hidden away in the desert-like terrain near Pine Valley well downslope of Mt Laguna. While you may look at the photo at the top of this page and think it’s not a waterfall to be bragging about, when you consider the environment it’s in, I think the miracle of even having a refreshing waterfall in such an unforgivingly arid climate was what made this place special in its own right. When this waterfall has good flow, which would probably only occur if Mt Laguna had accumulated enough snow so its snowmelt sufficiently drained into Cottonwood Creek, then this little oasis could be a refreshing place to cool off from the unrelenting desert climate. Our visit followed about two dry weeks since Mt Laguna had gotten a fair bit of snow from a series of strong storms in the first week of January. So the while there was water in Cottonwood Creek during our visit, I’m sure the falls could have been a bit more impressive had the area received a few more of these strong storms timed with a visit not too long afterwards.

That said, this was one of those obscure waterfalls that seemed to be ignored by most of the visitors to this part of San Diego County, especially since they’d typically visit Cedar Creek Falls or Three Sisters Falls. In fact, we suspect that it tended to be ignored largely because this waterfall lacked any signs hinting at its presence, which was further supported by the fact that we happened to be the only ones there when we made our late Saturday afternoon visit. We’ve provided trailhead directions below to help get you started if you’re interested in discovering this little gem for yourself.

Once we got to the proper pullout, we then crossed the Sunrise Highway to its east side adjacent to the guard rails. We then followed the guard rails north (uphill) towards its end, where there was a power pole as well as a faint trail right beside it that descended through the prickly overgrowth and into the ravine itself. The overgrowth and steepness of the terrain was only uncomfortable in the beginning (there was also a cactus patch adjacent to the trail in this stretch, where I might have gotten pricked by one of the thorns that went into my hiking boot), but the further down we went, the wider and flatter the trail became.

The trail would meander like this for the next 3/4-mile or so as it would follow the line of power pylons towering above us. I suspected that this trail (and the waterfall discovery) could probably be a result of power company workers setting up the infrastructure then chancing upon Cottonwood Creek Falls as the trail was created. We started to notice hints of Cottonwood Creek and its small waterfalls to our left as we were near the bottom of the descent. Anyways, the trail would ultimately end its descent at a T-intersection, where we then turned left to go upstream along Cottonwood Creek to get up to its waterfalls.

After a few more minutes of hiking, we then were side-by-side with several of the small tiers of Cottonwood Creek Falls. I’d suspect that each of the first few drops were on the order of 10-15ft or so. The trail, which became rockier and flanked with cacti and other desert foliage the further upstream we went, eventually got us to perhaps the uppermost and most impressive of the waterfall series, which you see photographed at the top of this page. That last tier was probably roughly 15ft or so tall. I did manage to climb the steep slope adjacent to this falls just to see what else was further upstream, but it just seemed to be more rocks and desert foliage so for all intents and purposes, this was my turnaround point. Julie and I happened to hear the croaking of frogs or toads near the last waterfall (though we couldn’t see them), which illustrated both the fragility of the ecosystem here as well as how seldomly-visited this place seemed to be.

We returned the way we came, and overall, Julie and I had spent about a little over an hour away from the car. The hike itself was said to be about 2 miles round trip. It seemed to go by faster on the way back to the car than on the way down, but I suspect that was because we knew where we were going on the return. When we were descending from the Sunrise Highway, we weren’t quite sure where we were going because there was nothing in the area that would have ever had us believing there could be a waterfall found here.