Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure

Ballard Camp, Figueroa Mountain

Posted on December 26, 2013 by Jack Elliott

La Jolla Trail

Trail through the oak trees.

Dropping into Birabent Canyon on La Jolla Trail.

A U.S. Forest Service stove at Ballard Camp, which was presumably named after the nearby town of Ballard or its namesake, W. N. Ballard, who built and managed a stagecoach station there from 1862-70. (Slippery Rock Stagecoach Road [19th Century])

Ballard was the hometown of Edgar B. Davison, previously mentioned on this blog in the post, Edgar B. Davison’s Cabin (circa 1900). Davison was one of the first forest rangers in Santa Barbara County and served on Figueroa Mountain from 1898 through 1912.

Ballard Camp beside the creek in Birabent Canyon.

Posted in Santa Barbara County | Tagged Backpacking, Ballard Camp, Camping, Campsites, Figueroa Mountain, Hiking, iPhoneography, Landscapes, Los Padres National Forest, Nature, Photos, Pics | Leave a comment

Lost Valley, Hurricane Deck, Potrero Cyn 20 Mile Day Hike

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Jack Elliott

Hurricane Deck, the prominent ridge defining the skyline.

There is no trace of water on Hurricane Deck, no trees and no campgrounds. It’s a 20 mile long ridgeline with south facing cliffs and steep grassy slopes on one side and a dense cover of chaparral on the other. It can be hot even in winter and deadly, broiling hot in summer.

Something sort of like a trail runs across the top of the ridge, but it’s neglected and unmaintained, brushy and ill-defined. In some sections it’s downright dangerous as a makeshift trail skirts the cliffs with only inches of space to walk, a precipice on one side and a wall of wiry chaparral poking at you from the other.

The clifftop is shaley and loose, with piles of small domino-like flat, rectangular pieces of interlaced stone covered in thin layers of dirt. Step near the cliff edge and the shale dominoes slide apart and the earth seems to disintegrate underfoot. One misstep could easily send a hiker over the edge and they wouldn’t stop tumbling for several hundred feet.

Lost Valley Trail

Twin Oaks Camp along Lost Valley Trail.

Crossing the top of middle Hurricane Deck recently, I was able to link a combination of old trail cut through the brush, current animal paths and thin use trail left by the occasional intrepid backcountry hiker. I only had to crawl under or through the brush in three areas, but only for a few feet at a time, which wasn’t bad. I had expected worse.

Never having crossed this middle section of the ridge I wasn’t sure how passable the route would be, and was all the while concerned I was going to run into impenetrable chaparral half way into my day, some 12 to 14 miles from the trailhead, and find myself stuck with only fleeting hours of short winter daylight. Sunset comes fast this time of year. I didn’t want to be fighting my way through a bramble of brush at half a mile an hour or less as the sun began setting.

At a certain point on such a hike there is no going back, and you commit to the planned task and just hope you make it through before it gets dark. I’m not the type to ask people for current conditions. Life’s a gamble. And that’s the beauty of it.

Looking over the Sisquoc River watershed as seen from the junction of Lost Valley Trail and Hurricane Deck Trail.

The junction of Lost Valley Trail and Hurricane Deck.

Looking back, eastward, over where I’d come from along the top of Hurricane Deck.

There are no rock formations of interest, no rolling grassy potreros or any other sort of notable features on top of middle Hurricane Deck. Perhaps the most remarkable feature are the views of Manzana Creek watershed on one side and the Sisquoc River drainage on the other.

I’ve heard of Europeans visiting the Santa Barbara area who’ve allotted time in their itinerary to hike Hurricane Deck. I wonder if those tourists made this particular geographical feature of the San Rafael Wilderness a destination based solely on the romantic, adventurous name it was bestowed with, because I can’t imagine what else might have led them to want to spend what little time they had on vacation hiking it. It had to be the lure of the name.

I’ve heard of other people of local origin that set out to hike the trail for the first time by trying to do it at night under a full moon. I don’t know how it works elsewhere, but around the southern Los Padres National Forest it’s not wise to assume a trail is easily passable just because it’s listed on a map. In fact, what’s labeled on a map as a trail may not even exist in any other manner but in old cut branches long buried in a thicket of overgrown chaparral.

What if Hurricane Deck was renamed using the ever expansive Big Book of Tiresome Cliches? What if it was instead named all too accurately the sunbaked, wind-swept, dry as a bone, God forsaken ridge? It certainly would not attract as much attention or foot traffic as it does, which is little as it is.

A section of Hurricane Deck. The trail, or a trail, runs up the edge of the steep ridgeline to the conical apex and then down the saddle on the left.

Potrero Canyon Trail showing Hurricane Deck looming in the upper left-hand corner of the frame.

Posted in Santa Barbara County | Tagged Hiking, Hurricane Deck, iPhoneography, Landscapes, Los Padres National Forest, Lost Valley, Nature, Photos, Pics, San Rafael Wilderness, Writing | 9 Comments

A Goofy Guerilla Camp, Cedar Creek

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Jack Elliott

Along Cedar Creek Trail

While ranging off trail recently I came across a bootleg camp along a small spring-fed tributary of Cedar Creek in Sespe Wilderness. It was situated right in the creek. Branches and fallen trees had been lashed together with synthetic cordage and fashioned into a crude roof frame. A rolled up sheet of heavy, clear plastic was stuffed into the branches of the framework for storage and was apparently used to make a waterproof ceiling. There was a pile of charcoal and some scattered trash including the obligatory crumpled beer can or two, the trailings of the slouch class of American recreationists, who in this case thought it wiser to ensure their plastic makeshift ceiling was carefully rolled and stored for later use rather than leave the area free of garbage and their charcoal.

Five to ten yards away there was a perfect grassy bench above the creek, at the foot of a slope and beneath the drooping branches of a cedar tree, which was a far more intelligent and hospitable place to locate a small camp. It would have been a warmer, dryer and roomier place upon which to work, relax and sleep.

Yet some clowns had set up shop as close to the water as possible, nearly in the muck of the brook, in the dampest and coldest place around, hemmed in by the tiny trickle of cloudy late season water and several trees, with little room to work around the fire or relax let alone roll out a bedroll. The whole thing looked clumsy and silly.

Bear scratch

The real, official, Cedar Creek Camp

The camp in question.

Posted in Ventura County | Tagged Backpacking, Campgrounds, Camping, Cedar Creek, Hiking, Hiking (2), Photos, Sespe Wilderness | 2 Comments

Mountain Lion Might Have Killed Goats in Santa Barbara Neighborhood

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Jack Elliott

[EDIT: 12-12-13]

A few days ago a sign was placed beside La Cumbre road warning about a mountain lion that was thought to have killed two pet goats at a house on the bottom of La Cumbre Rd, about a block and a half from State Street.

Posted in Santa Barbara | Tagged Animals, Hiking, Los Padres National Forest, Mountain Lions, Wildlife | Leave a comment

Return to Whiteacre Peak or Day of the Condor

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Jack Elliott

A long lost condor radio transmitter on Whiteacre Peak.

Condors seem to have an eye on Whiteacre Peak in Sespe Wilderness. The first time Stillman (davidstillman.blogspot.com) and I hiked the peak, after having just left the summit, condors came soaring out of the vast blue sky east of the mountain, dark dots in the far distance. Not long after one bird flew over us making a few passes before landing atop the very summit we had been standing on a short time before.

On our latest hike to the top of Whiteacre Peak, the summit of which is polka dotted with white bird poop, a condor once more flew over our heads making several passes, flying into the wind, easing slowly by looking us over before soaring off and disappearing into the distance.

Such relatively close encounters I suppose are rare. The California condor is a critically endangered species whose total population in 1987 numbered in the twenties. Between 1987 and 1992, after all known birds were captured for a captive breeding program, no condors at all flew wild in California. At the time of this writing about 219 free flying California condors are alive with about 53 of them having been released and fledged in southern California. (CDFW)

Number 92 giving us the beady bird eye from the sky.

From the Dough Flat Trailhead, gateway to Sespe Wilderness within the southern Los Padres National Forest, Whiteacre Peak looks more like a rocky ridgeline than a peak. From some angles along Sespe Trail the summit actually looks to be lower in elevation than the surrounding sandstone outcrop.

Yet, despite it’s appearance from below it’s a notable summit, a rocky knob rising above the surrounding terrain and offering three hundred and sixty degree views of the Sespe Wilderness and far beyond including some of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.

There were no signatures in the register since we were last there a year ago. And before that time the last signature was logged in 2007. It is appropriately labeled a “Seldom Visited Site” (SVS). While there are some sections of footpath and animal trail on the way to the peak, there is no official trail. It’s a relatively short, but tough hike requiring some scrambling and bushwhacking.

Stillman and Mark enjoying textbook SoCal winter afternoon weather on Whiteacre Potrero below the peak.

The tilted slab of bedrock forming Whiteacre Peak slopes eastward and is hollowed out by wind and rain in various places to form a number of caves, alcoves and massive overhangs. There are several small grassy flats amongst the uplifted sandstone slabs and boulder piles, which are veined with wiry chaparral and punctuated with the occasional conifer. Several small basins or tanks in the slabs serve as reservoirs on the otherwise dry mountaintop by catching and holding rain.

The peak holds some well-preserved traces of the sandstone’s marine origins including ripple marks from water or wind on sand and rill marks suggesting the erosive work of retreating water during low tide. There are fossilized mollusks scattered about, which are common all over the southern Los Padres National Forest, but there are a few fossilized bones, too, from something relatively large.

It is a landscape I look over and feel compelled to explore, and since our first visit last year I’ve wanted to return, and to stay a night. Despite its relative close proximity to the trailhead, Whiteacre Peak feels very remote and desolate. Add the bear and mountain lion prints we’ve seen along with the condors and the peak is a rather notable bit of wildness in southern California.

A chunk of what looks to be ancient tidal flat with rill marks and ripples showing the interplay between water and sediment now preserved in sandstone.