Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure

Mastodon & Mammoth Sign: Reading Trees in the Santa Ynez Mountains

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Jack Elliott

Santa Ynez Mountains

“Elephants’ habit of snapping or uprooting trees could explain why species such as oak, ash, beech, lime, sycamore, field maple, sweet chestnut, hazel, alder and willow can regrow from the point at which the stem is broken. In eastern and southern Africa there are dozens of tree species which resprout—or coppice—from the snapped trunk, and ecologists recognize this as an evolutionary response to attacks by elephants. … Trees that survive the attention of elephants often come to dominate the places in which the animals live: the ability to coppice confers powerful selective advantages.”

—George Monbiot, “Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life” (2014)

I went for a walk in the woods up an unnamed trailless canyon in the Santa Ynez Mountains. That water trickled in the creek was probably sign enough somebody was growing weed somewhere nearby. Marijuana seems to be everywhere that there is water in the forest.

Sure enough I came across an old grow site. The guerrilla growers had thinned the forest canopy and understory to let sunlight onto the ground where they had rooted their crop. I could make out vague depressions in the earth that had once held the pot plants, now filled with leaf mulch and the flush of annual spring greens.

A coast live oak tree (Quercus agrifolia) cut in half by the growers that resprouted a limb.

A number of oak trees had been cut in half or coppiced some time ago by the growers, but had resprouted from the remaining trunks. How hardy are the oaks.

Fell an oak near ground level and a burst of new branches explodes from the stump. The burly hardwood withstands much abuse in campsites and other popular areas: shot for target practice, chipped and hacked up with hatchets and axes, and used as billboards for the carving of initials, driving of nails and stakes and whatever else. The scars can last decades.

Sometimes one finds old barbed wire fencing strung through the solid live wood of big trees. One can still see today in the backcountry of Santa Barbara County an “E” and an “F” carved into an oak around a century ago by the son of a pioneer family. (Eddy Fields’ Initials)

In A Sand County Almanac (1949) famed conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote of reading pine trees like books on his Wisconsin farm. The “spaces between the successive whorls of branches … are an autobiography that he who walks with trees may read at will.” The longer the space between each annual whorl of branches, Leopold advised, the more rain had fallen the previous year. The shortest spaces reflect drier years and droughts.

I wondered if, to the keen observer 100 years hence, the signs of marijuana grow sites would remain evident in the particular form of the once butchered trees, which had sprouted new limbs and grew on.

Another tree that was decapitated by the growers and sprouted new branches.

But what else might the observer glean about the past from the way the trees appear today? What else might one read in the subtle clues of the forest? The “small-talk,” as Leopold called it.

In the particular growth habit of the oak had I also been witnessing a telltale sign of the late proboscideans, the distant relatives of today’s elephants that once thrived in California?

Was it a defensive characteristic imprinted through evolution into the tree’s genetic code in response to the behavior of American mastodons or Columbian mammoths, which had grazed or mauled the trees for so long?

Coast live oaks dominate the landscape around these parts like few if any other trees. One wonders if this is in some part due to the elephant-like megafauna that roamed the region during the Pleistocene and evolved alongside the trees. Prehistoric herbivores whose behavior was perhaps similar to that of today’s elephants, and in turn whose evolutionary influence might account for the particular growth habits and adaptations of certain trees, as Monbiot suggests.

A fossil pygmy mammoth (Mammuthus exilis) skeleton found in Santa Barbara County, as displayed at the Museum of Natural History.

A painting at the museum depicting a Columbian mammoth and the smaller American mastodon.

Posted in Santa Barbara | Tagged Hiking, Hiking (2), History, Los Padres National Forest, Mammoths, Nature, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez Mountains, Wilderness, Writing | 4 Comments

Arlington, Cathedral, La Cumbre Peaks Scramble & More

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Jack Elliott

Santa Barbara hikes Arlington Cathedral La Cumbre Peak The stairway to Arlington climbing out of Mission Canyon.

“Genji climbed the hill behind the temple and looked off toward the city. The forests receded into a spring haze.

‘Like a painting,’ he said. ‘People who live in such a place can hardly want to be anywhere else.'”

—Murasaki Shikibu, “The Tale of Genji” (1008)

A smattering of rain has moistened the Santa Ynez Mountains raising the seasonal precipitation total to 72 percent of normal county-wide, better than each of the four previous seasons, but not what was expected this year during the strongest El Nino ever recorded. The weather is cool. A low ceiling of shifting cloud cover obscures the peaks over town sprinkling them in intermittent showers of light rain.

Be back by four, she says. That allows six hours, which isn’t enough time, but I go anyways. I have to go. “The mountains are calling and I must go,” John Muir wrote. I’ve never heard that call, but I think I’ve felt it.

Drop by seldom seen drop on through another warm and dry winter in this fifth year of epic drought. Any moisture falling from the sky provides an irresistible impetus to get out for a walk in conditions that are fleeting and seem to be increasingly uncommon.

I keep thinking I need to read Edward Abbey again to get used to the coming desert.

Arlinton Peak hike Santa Barbara Another look up the stairway to Arlington. The trail winds through the rocks to summit in the clouds.

Arlinton Peak hike trail santa barbara The trail passes under this jumble of boulders shown here and below.

Arlinton Peak trail hike Santa Barbara

On spotless days exceptional long views from the eastern salient of Arlington Peak; look over the canyons to the Santa Barbara littoral and the Pacific Ocean and Channel Islands beyond. What about the messy days? With low clouds and rain the hike takes on a mysterious and intriguing quality.

On cloudless days land lays bare under glaring sun; the nude sunbather on the beach leaving nothing to the imagination. The curves of the mountain, the hills, ridges, valleys and peaks are seen for what they are. It’s all out in the open.

Secreted away in clouds and only partly seen, however, an eager imagination will paint fantastic landscapes, completing the rest of the unseen picture in the mind and making the peaks rise another few thousand feet. A brief flash of a thought and it’s gone. The intrigued mind takes over as the mental image fades. Who knows what could be up there hidden amid the swirling mist of the coastal cloud forest? What country am I in? The mind wanders, enamored with the possibilities.

The airborne droplets flow over the sandstone and chaparral of the mountain slopes, thickening and thinning, enveloping and reducing vision to a matter of feet, the rocky hillside fading into the grayness, then release from the cool darkened grip gives way to views thousands of feet below.

I march on along a trail I’ve walked before, but through an enchanted cloudland I’ve never seen, a hunched character in the hazy montane landscape of a Japanese sansui painting. I perch on a boulder gazing into the distance over the city as a red-tailed hawk floats by at eye level screaming at me. The mind wanders, enamored with the possibilities.

Cathedral Peak hike Santa Barbara Approaching Cathedral Peak along the saddle from Arlington.

Cathedral Peak cave hike Santa Barbara La Cumbre Looking out of Cathedral Peak cave over Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean.

La Cumbre Peak Cathedral Peak trail hike The trail cutting through a patch of miner’s lettuce along the saddle between Cathedral and La Cumbre peaks.

La Cumbre Peak hike Santa Barbara Los Padres View from La Cumbre Peak of the backsides of Cathedral and Arlington.

La Cumbre Peak Fire Lookout Santa Ynez Mountains Santa Barbara La Cumbre Peak fire lookout.

Arlington Peak, Cathedral Peak cave La Cumbre hike santa barbara The banner feature photo for the blog shows the peaks in question lined up; the pyramidal Arlington just right of center frame, the huge sandstone knob of Cathedral, and the conifer-capped mound of La Cumbre on the top left.

After a couple of hours of sipping warm Santa Barbara tap water—an acquired taste—the shady and cool low saddle between Cathedral and La Cumbre provides an abundance of crisp and succulent miner’s lettuce beaded with rainwater. I kneel down and snatch it up by the handful, eagerly chomping it down and enjoying the tasty refreshment before the slog up the steep south face of La Cumbre.

Rain begins falling somewhere along the three mile stretch of Camino Cielo Road on my way from La Cumbre to Arroyo Burro Trail. I had walked from Tunnel Trailhead up to Arlington summit, to Cathedral cave and on up to La Cumbre. It’s a steep and sassy two and a half miles up.

My feet and legs like the flat asphalt road and push the pace leaving the battered old fire lookout atop La Cumbre behind without stopping to rest. But my mind does not settle until reaching Arroyo Burro. Back on the dirt; into the bowling upper canyon of San Antonio Creek; the rain pattering against me. You know the smell of wetted woods and fields of grass; the soft and subtle sounds of damp forested mountains, a trickling creek.

prickly phlox santa barbara wildflowers Leptodactylon californicum (prickly phlox)

Anise swallowtail caterpillar.

Santa Barbara hikes Arroyo Burro Trail Santa Ynez Mountains Los Padres Arroyo Burro Trail runs out of the lower right-hand corner of the frame as it drops into the canyon shown below.

Arroyo Burro Trail Santa Barbara hikes Santa Ynez Mountains

Arroyo BUrro Trail hike Upper Arroyo Burro Trail.

Arroyo Burro Trail San Antonio Creeks Santa Barbara San Antonio Creek crossing.

phacelia santa barbara wildflower Phacelia grandiflora

Santa Barbara newt A California newt (Taricha torosa) crossing the trail heading away from the creek.

rattlesnake hike santa barbara See the viper.

Five hours into the walk and I’m on autopilot stomping along Arroyo Burro in the rain, traversing eastward below Barger Peak after having climbed out of San Antonio Creek. I’m energetic, my body eager to walk, my mind happy to endure. I feel like I have “the body of a taught, preteen Swedish boy.” I want to complete the 14 mile loop, merging onto Jesusita Trail and back up to Tunnel Trailhead where I parked, but I’m out of time, supposed to be home. That’s what she said.

Then I see the rattler. A juvenile coiled in the middle of the trail. On a cool and rainy day in late afternoon it’s among the last things I expect to see.

Fortunately it’s wound up in a circular shape that stands out from its surroundings and I spot it and it registers accurately in the brain. Had it been stretched out my eyes might have seen it, but my mind might have passed it off as just another twig on the trail. Who expects a snake in the rain on a cool afternoon? Its fangs would have readily pierced my thin and worn nylon pants; a wee spot o’ wild in the wilderness. I stop. Admire. And plod on.

The trail becomes overgrown with scrub and grass, hard to impossible to see clearly. After the viper it’s not a comforting occurrence. Were I to slow enough to make certain I see the trail and avoid stepping on a snake it would take me four times as long to finish the hike. I stomp on without regard or slowing my pace, plowing through the drenched brush getting showered in water and playing the odds, hoping they’re in my favor, that I won’t get bit.

rattlensake

rattlesnake santa barbara hiking I opt out of the hike prematurely, leaving Arroyo Burro and walking down lower Jesusita to Steven’s Park, where I get a ride home just a few minutes away. I suppose the distance for the day at 11 miles.

Next go around I’ll have to allow enough time to complete the loop; the Santa Barbara Triple Crown. Start at Steven’s Park, up Jesusita to Mission Canyon, up to Arlington Peak, Cathedral Peak, La Cumbre Peak, across Camino Cielo, and down Arroyo Burro to Jesusita and back to Steven’s.

It’s nowhere near as long or grueling as my friend Stillman’s 28 mile “masochistic odyssey” that he dubbed the Ojai Triple Crown, but it’s a worthy hike nonetheless. I’d rate it, myself, as the best hike in the Santa Barbara frontcountry.

Arroyo Burro Trail hike Santa Barbara View from Arroyo Burro Trail looking up San Roque Canyon at the three peaks from whence I came.

Posted in Santa Barbara | Tagged Arlington Peak, Cathedral Peak, Hiking, Hiking (2), La Cumbre Peak, Los Padres National Forest, Nature, Pics, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez Mountains | 10 Comments

Sage Hill Wildflowers

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Jack Elliott

California poppies on Grass Mountain, Zaca Ridge, Figueroa Mountain 3-26-2016

Around these here parts, in a mild climate with little to no snow, the wildflower blooms mark one of the few striking signals of seasonal change. The go-to sites in Santa Barbara County might be those on Figueroa Mountain. What might be called Figueroa Prime, a poppy and lupine field located roadside at the junction of Figueroa Mountain Road and Catway Road, is usually worth a look and typically attracts a weekend stream of “industrial tourists.”

The face of Grass Mountain lures in a veritable stampede during a good year with cars overflowing the parking lot at the trailhead and lining both sides of the road for some distance. When in full bloom the pyramid-shaped grassy face of the mountain can be seen from well over twenty miles away, from along the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara.

In early spring, from the top of San Marcos Pass, it’s easy to tell if the poppies have opened before making the hour long drive back to Figueroa for a tour. When Grass Mountain can be seen lit up orange, twenty miles yonder as the condor flies far across the Santa Ynez Valley, then it’s on.

Kite flying below Sage Hill with a glimpse of the poppy fields abloom thereon.

One of the better bloom sites this season, however, came at a quieter and lesser visited nook of the Los Padres National Forest that’s not typically known for flowers. On Sage Hill along the Santa Ynez River the wildflowers showed with an intensity rivaling Figueroa. The area burned about three years ago in the White Fire, as seen in some of the photos with the blackened skeletons of sagebrush still standing.

The bowl-like canyon on the south slope of Sage Hill bloomed big. In some patches the flowers seemed to lay petal to petal across the slope in huge wind rippled blankets of solid color. While some of the flowers on the hill were visible from the river below and from afar along San Marcos Pass, the small canyon where it bloomed best was largely out of sight tucked behind the folds of the grassy mountain, fully revealed to only the few people curious enough to wander without trail up the steep hillside.

It was not until I crested the summit of Sage Hill and began walking down the steep south face that the full extent of the flower field came into view far below. It was good to epic. The subtle, sweet fragrance of thousands of flowers wafted far and wide across the mountainside in the afternoon breeze. Carried in the wind down the slope, I could still smell the fields of flowers when walking along the riverside grassy flat at the foot of Sage Hill far below and away from any of the blooms.

A white-lined sphinx moth caterpillar.

Hundreds of sphinx moth caterpillars were crawling all over the mountainside munching the wildflowers. A week ago Pascal Baudar — a wild food instructor and author of the brand new book, “The New Wildcrafted Cuisine: Exploring the Exotic Gastronomy of Local Terroir”— featured these worms in a post on his Facebook page. He described them as an “amazing and actually delicious food” with a “nutty” flavor. See his cooked worm photos and full comment at this link.

Looking down slope at the foot of Sage Hill and toward the Santa Ynez River just out of frame.

Related Posts:

Birabent Canyon and Grass Mountain

Grass Mountain and Zaca Peak

Figueroa Wildflowers 2010

Posted in Santa Barbara | Tagged Hiking, Hiking (2), iPhoneography, lupine, Nature, Photography, Pics, poppies, Santa Barbara, Travel, wildflowers | 6 Comments

Sitiptip Flat, Los Padres National Forest

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Jack Elliott

The place. Note the white mineral deposit on its far side.

“Our history is carried by word of mouth, but it’s anchored to the land. The old boys used to play a game: one of them would leave his cap on a rock, somewhere in the mountains. Then he’d go into the pub and tell the name of the rock to a friend. That was all the information they needed. The friend had to run out and retrieve it. All the rocks had names. My uncle could remember all of them. They were never written down.”

—Dafydd Morris-Jones, as quoted by George Monbiot in “Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life” (2014)

So far as I know, which isn’t much, this here field is officially unnamed. How has it escaped this long? Isn’t everything labeled these days? It seems like a remarkable enough place that it would have a name by now.

Among the Chumash, the Spaniards and Californios and early Americans that followed, surely the place had a name. Through the years, the millennia, at some time it must of had a name.

“It’s landscape associative. Folk traditions and oral history always have been. Professional history tends to regard a fascination with place as antiquarian. But mythology is all about place. . . . I wish the West Texas pioneers, like those in the Far West, the Deep South, even New England, had learned and retained more of the Native American names once attached to these canyons.”

—Dan Flores, “Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains,” (1990)

As with the Comanche and Kiowa of which Flores writes, sense of place and the importance of the landscape figured prominently in Chumash culture. Whereas in American culture places are often named after people, the Chumash tended to name people after places. Each prominent geographical feature likely had a name and placenames were commonly taken from minerals found in the area. Applegate quotes Harrington: “In ancient times there must have been placenames all up and down the canyons.”

A place of this remarkable nature — a grassy flat with a mineral deposit, near a river once stuffed with steelhead trout, at the foot of pine capped mountains once teeming with game — seems like it would have been an attractive location in times past. It’s just a wild guess.

When I hiked through in 2011 I don’t recall the area being as salty as it was this last summer. Maybe because back during that particular season a lot of rain had fallen, 160 percent of normal county-wide up in Santa Barbara, and the minerals were diluted by abundant freshwater.

After several years of drought the crusty white buildup was much more extensive in late 2015, as shown in the snapshots. In some places the crystals were finely shaped and well-developed. Small puddles of extremely concentrated salt water pooled in the cavities of the rock that when stirred with a stick swirled like oil in water.

The word for salt in Barbareno Chumash is tip. Adding emphasis through reduplication signifies that there is a lot not just a little. Thus tiptip may be roughly translated as “lots of salt.”

“Goleta Slough was called tiptip, ‘salina, salt flat,’ and not surprisingly, the Ventureno equivalent sitiptip was applied to Hueneme lagoon,” Applegate writes.

Alternatively, sitiptip might be understood to mean “the place with lots of salt.”

Posted in Ventura | Tagged Backpacking, Camping, Hiking, Hiking (2), History, iPhoneography, Landscapes, Los Padres National Forest, Nature, Pics, Travel | 12 Comments

Black Cottonwood Wildcraft

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Jack Elliott

balsam poplar Santa Ynez River Los Padres hikes A dribble of resin oozing from the leaf bud of a black cottonwood tree (Populus trichocarpa) growing along the Santa Ynez River.

Black cottonwood buds may hold the finest natural fragrance found in the Los Padres National Forest. The gooey resin smells similar to jasmine. It’s potent, sweet, and heady. Huff worthy. Like fine perfume or essential oil. I daub it all over a few fingers just to smell it over and over again.

As a superb wild fragrance alone it’s a remarkable plant, but the resin can also be used medicinally. “Balsam Poplar is a simple, reliable, and predictable pain and swelling treatment,” herbalist Michael Moore writes in “Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West.” Moore discusses its many uses and he gives instructions for making infused oil, salve and tinctures from leaf buds.

black cottonwood Santa Ynez River balsam trichocarpa poplar A bud post-pop, the leaves sticky and redolent of the fragrant resin.

“Poplar was named after the local poplar trees which are actually cottonwoods.”

—Robert A. Burtness, “A Camper’s Guide to the Tri-county Area: Santa Barbara County and Western Ventura County” (1963)

A backpacking campsite in the Dick Smith Wilderness of Santa Barbara County takes its name from poplar trees, which are also known as cottonwoods. The Burtness guide doesn’t mention if Poplar Camp was named after the Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii) or the black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa).

Black Cottonwood bud resin jasmine Los Padres Santa Ynez Santa Barbara Ooey gooey fragrant bud resin.

The bud resin of black cottonwood or balsam poplar trees contains pain relieving substances akin to aspirin, Moore advises, and the prepared oil or salve can be applied topically as an anti-inflammatory agent for pain relief. It’s a prime source for a wildcrafted, naturally soothing balm for pummeled hiker’s feet after the long walk or for sore hands or joints.

“The aromatic resins act as vasodilators, antimicrobials, and stimulants to skin proliferation,” Moore writes. “The salve has been used for burns by Native Americans and Europeans for millenia. It lessens pain, keeps the surface antiseptic, and also stimulates skin regeneration.” It’s great medicine to help heal a blister.

The resin or healing compound derived from the leaf buds is sometimes called Balm of Gilead, a name taken from a fragrant medicinal plant product mentioned in the Bible.