Tenaja Falls near Murrieta, CA. Sketchy road, pretty hike, slippery rocks.

We visited Tenaja Falls near Murrieta for the first time today. Tenaja Falls is located in the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness area of the Cleveland National Forest.

Here is a recap of our hike in pictures:

The Tenaja Falls trailhead…

Here is the trail map on the board at the Tenaja Falls trailhead (click for an online map). Notice the Teneja trailhead at the bottom of the map. We drove past that one, and headed to the Tenaja Falls trailhead at the top left of the map.

Here are the directions to the Tenaja Falls trailhead as provided by the US Forest Service:

DRIVING DIRECTIONS FROM I-15 TO TENAJA, FISHERMAN’S CAMP AND TENAJA FALLS TRAILHEADS:
I-15 to Clinton Keith road, go west. Clinton Keith becomes Tenaja Road after 2 miles. Stay on Tenaja Road for another 8 miles to Cleveland Forest Road. Turn right on Cleveland Forest Road one mile to Wilderness boundary and Tenaja trailhead parking. Road becomes South Main Divide (7S04). Fisherman’s Camp trailhead is another 3 miles north along road. Tenaja Falls trailhead is another 2 miles north. Ortega Highway (Hwy 74) is 15 miles north of Tenaja Falls.

The road to reach the trailheads is a single-lane road with turnouts, ruts, cliffs and blind curves. Cars going in the opposite direction can appear very quickly as shown in this video from our drive back from Teneja Falls…

A few rules and warnings…

The start of the trail…

Inside this box is a clipboard with a sign-in sheet…

We had no problems following the trail…

Over rocks…

Across a creek (I slipped on a loose rock on the way back, but I saved my phone and camera)…

A few more pictures along the trail…

Our first view of the waterfall…

This is located at the top of the waterfall. I assume that you could read the elevation at some point…

I saw this lizard hanging out at the top of the falls…

This is the top portion of the waterfall. Although the rocks are very slippery and the fall could be disastrous, a bunch of people climbed down to wade in this pool…

We didn’t wade in the pool, but we did climb down to stick our feet in the running water…

One last view on our way back out…

Since we went on a Saturday, there were quite a few people on the trail. Everyone we met was friendly. We had a few people offer to take pictures of us, and one person even gave us a hand climbing back up to the top of the falls. Our trail shoes work great on the dirt, but were horrible on the slick rocks. If you go, please be careful.

Looking for more hiking spots in and around the Inland Empire? Check out our list of Places to Hike in Riverside and Beyond.