At Three Sisters Falls, new trail amenities and Kumeyaay name aim to help 'revive the narrative of the land'

Hikers headed to the popular Three Sisters Falls in the Cleveland National Forest can expect to see new updates to the trailhead this weekend, including a new name in the Kumeyaay language.

The moderately-difficult 4.5-mile out-and-back trail, which leads to three waterfalls is one of the most popular hikes in the national forest. So U.S. Forest Service officials have introduced several new amenities over the past year, including a new trailhead parking lot and vault toilets, a helicopter landing zone and underground water storage to help fight wildfires.

With consultation from the Kumeyaay Nation, officials also changed the name of the trailhead from Three Sisters Falls to Cha’chaany Hamuk, which translates roughly to "three sisters" in the Kumeyaay language.

“Three Sisters Falls is something that the local community has known about for many decades,” said Amy Reid, the district ranger for the Cleveland National Forest's Palomar District.

But social media catapulted the trail into the public eye around 2016, she said.

“There's been a lot of improvements at this site to help better manage the use and bring safer access for the public," she said. "This is the next iteration of that process.”

Stanley Rodriguez, a professor of Kumeyaay language and humanities at the Kumeyaay Community College, called the renaming an important step toward acknowledging the Kumeyaay people in San Diego County.

“This land is our holy land; in other words, every stream, every mountain, every valley — everything has a name. And when we endured three waves of encroachment,” Rodriguez said, referring to Spanish, Mexican and American colonization, “a lot of the names were either twisted or completely erased.

“By reviving that, by using those (names) again, you help to revive the narrative of the land,” he added.

The Forest Service connected with the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy about three years ago for consultation on the name change, Reid said.

The reconstruction cost $1.57 million with funding from organizations such as the Wildlife Conservation Board and the San Diego River Conservancy, according to Felipe Lepe, the Southern California program coordinator for the National Forest Foundation, which works with the Forest Service to fund development projects

The project, which took about a year and a half to complete, was split into two phases: one focused on improving the visitor experience, and one focused on emergency services.

For visitors, the most noticeable change will be the new parking lot and the addition of four vault toilets.

Reid hopes these new sanitation features will help preserve and protect the landscape, especially when the trail gets a lot of visitors. It's one of the most heavily trafficked trails in the Cleveland National Forest, seeing between 480 to 500 hikers each weekend, she said.

“Imagine hundreds of people on any given day out there, and there's no restroom facilities, there's no trash facilities,” Reid said. “All of that becomes an impact on the landscape. It becomes a sanitation issue and public safety issue.”

The new emergency services at the trailhead are focused on wildfire prevention and making it easier for rescue and fire crews to respond to emergencies in San Diego County’s backcountry. An underground water tank storage for firefighting can hold 30,000 gallons, and there is a helicopter landing zone.

Those additions are fairly unusual for trailhead reconstruction projects in Southern California, Lepe said.

“Most of the other (recreation) site work that we do is mostly on the surface, and we're not digging down into Earth and adding something like water tanks,” he said.

There’s a high wildfire risk in the Cleveland National Forest, but it’s not the only thing hikers should be mindful of. Along with being one of the most popular hikes in the national forest, the hike to Three Sisters Falls has developed a reputation for dangerous heat exposure.

Hikers, especially on hot summer days, should be sure to bring enough water on their trek and avoid hiking during the hottest parts of the day.

Last summer, the Forest Service closed the trail because of heat advisories, and this year rangers are already responding to heat-related calls most weekends.

Two people died at the waterfalls last year, a 48-year-old woman who fell from a ledge and a 27-year-old man who drowned days later.

Despite these tragedies, the trail itself has seen significant safety developments over the last roughly seven years, Reid said.

Previously, hikers had to use ropes to climb down the hillside to get to the waterfalls — a strenuous and potentially dangerous endeavor. Now, the trail has a more gradual descent to the water.

Hikers like Margaret Elizondo, who leads group hikes with the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, said the improvements have made the trail feel much safer since she began hiking there about 10 years ago.

She visited the Cha’chaany Hamuk trailhead a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised to see the new parking lot and vault toilets.

While she sees the trail’s popularity as “a double-edged sword,” she said amenities like this can help protect the landscape for future hikers.

“This is just such an easy way for people to get out there and do things that are good for their bodies,” she said. “We need so many more places that have facilities like this to make places more accessible to the public and keep them cleaner so … that we're not destroying them.”

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune .