Devil’s Playground topside, Santa Ynez Mountains.
There are two worlds in Devil’s Playground. The topside and the underside.
The upper dimension is one of expansive sky, farsighted coastal views and the blinding sunlight and heat of a southward sloping mountainside facing the mirror-like Pacific Ocean.
The lower realm consists of the cool shadowy confines between and within the weathered stone. The massive caves and voids hollowed out of the sandstone by wind and rain and the cracks formed by the rise of the Santa Ynez Mountains and fracturing of massive bedrock plates.
The Slot is one remarkable geological feature of that subsurface realm, a some forty foot crack in the sandstone which a person can barely squeeze through in some sections.
Descending into the shady and shadowy underside of Devil’s Playground.
Mossy sandstone and dudelya succulents deep within the cracks.
The red arrow points into The Slot.
Looking down the pipe from the top end. Where’s Waldo?
The oak tree popping out above the rock, and Pacific Ocean in the distance.
The oak from below.
Looking back toward the oak from further down the increasingly narrow Slot.
The view overhead.
Shuffling through a tight spot in The Slot.
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That’s a superb place – reminds me of some of the narrow ‘wadis’ I did in Jordan 🙂
Carol.
One day we were driving the length of West Camino Cielo, we stopped at the TH for Devil’s Playground and decided to hike around without knowing anything about the place. We clearly only saw the topside (and not even much of that), based on what I saw, I had no clue that there was an underside to the place. One more item to put on my “to do and see” list.
Nice post and great photos!
I love those joints that are big enough to get into. Reminds me of the wonderful “Joint Trail” in the Needles district of Canyonlands NP. You feel like a little bug down in there!