P-Bar Flat Campground along the upper Santa Ynez River began as a private hunting camp around 1916.
It was originally known as “Piss Pot Flat,” a name taken from a chamber pot that hung on a post and was used as target practice.
“In the interest of dignity, the current label evolved,” Bob Burtness writes in the ’81 edition of his book, “A Camper’s Guide to the Tri-county Area: Santa Barbara – Ventura – San Luis Obispo.”
Motorcycle accident victim being airlifted to hospital from Highway 33.
On my way up Highway 33 to Pine Mountain I came around a corner and was flagged down by Los Padres Fire whose engine was stopped in the northbound lane. Half of a motorcycle lay in the gravel on the shoulder, its rear end somewhere not within sight. Several firemen knelt at the side of the road tending to a man laying somewhere in the bushes.
I was the first vehicle to come upon the scene just after LPF got there. I sat in my car, front row, watching the highly tuned, well-oiled rescue machine comprised of various first responders rapidly converging on the scene topped by the helicopter thumping up the canyon and landing beside the road. They had the victim secured, stabilized and in route via airlift to the hospital in relatively short order and traffic once again moving.
After seeing that, it would take a lot for the short hike I had planned to turn out any other way but just fine. A terrible day hiking always beats being airlifted to the trauma center.
Reyes Peak (7,514′)
The Reyes Peak Trail along the spine of Pine Mountain Ridge out to Haddock Mountain must rate as one of the finest four mile stretches of hiking trail anywhere in the southern Los Padres National Forest.
That’s my impression, anyhow, based on my own limited experience. Thinking I may be overstating it, however, I checked what Craig R. Carey had to say in his recent trail guide book, “Hiking and Backpacking Santa Barbara & Ventura.” According to Carey, the Reyes Peak Trail along the northern slope of the peak is “quite simply one of the most beautiful stretches in the southern Los Padres.”
The area is exceptional for its elevation of around 7000′, its clear trail through wide-open conifer forest, large rosy orange sandstone boulders and expansive views of Cuyama Badlands to the north, and the Sespe Creek watershed, Pacific Ocean and Santa Barbara Channel Islands to the south.
Here off-trail wandering and exploration is not just possible but easy, the open and sparse understory of the pine forest invites it. This stands in stark contrast to so much of the chaparral country that dominates the lower elevations in the LPNF, which is mostly impenetrable and where even official trails themselves are often overgrown and hard to follow.
The upper reaches of Pine Mountain also offers a cooler locale for summer hiking. When the lower elevations are broiling in 90 degree heat the ridge at elevation can be in the mid 70s and there is always a tall tree nearby providing a shady place to rest.
Wind gnarled pines along the use trail to Reyes Peak, the Cuyama Badlands in the distance beyond.
Cuyama Badlands
Reyes Peak summit.
Ice can stove on Reyes. (The Ice Can Stove: A Brief History)
Haddock Mountain
Trailside view.
Dwarf mistletoe. The globules are liquid-filled and contain seeds which are sent flying at up to 60 miles an hour when they burst. The seeds stick to nearby trees within range, germinate and then root into the new host.
Haddock Mountain
Haddock Mountain showing some of its characteristic green lichen covered rock faces.
With the view and sound of a light intermittent wind through the pine trees this little shaded flat along the edge of the cliff was a choice spot for a break.
Mountaintop view over Sespe Creek watershed and, in the distance, the fog covered Pacific and Santa Barbara Channel Islands.
Haddock Mountain summit.
Haddock Mountain summit (7,431′).
Related Posts:
Haddock Mountain Descent to Sespe Creek via Potrero John Creek
An illustration originally published in the San Francisco Call newspaper in 1911.
“CALIFORNIA CONDOR
A RARE BIRD WHOSE EGGS ARE VALUED AT $18,000 A DOZENIt is not generally known that among the fads of the day the collecting of birds’ eggs is one that interests the cultured and wealthy, and one that may be very expensive to indulge in, while it affords a mild recreation to thousands of individuals of moderate means.”
—Fort Worth Gazette, December 28, 1895
American newspapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries chronicled the exploits of men raiding condor nests in the mountain ranges of California to take eggs as trophy souvenirs and to sell. Eighteen thousand dollars in 1895, adjusted for inflation, equates to over $2 million dollars today.
Many of these newspapers remarked on the dire plight of condors and their declining population and some predicted their inevitable extinction. Yet, ironically, in the same stories, they spun romantic yarns about the heroic adventures of nest raiders.
“Why are the eggs of the California condor so valuable?” an egg raider is quoted as asking in an article titled, “Hunt for a Condor’s Egg,” which was published in the New York Sun in 1900. “Because the birds are almost extinct now,” he answered, “and will be wholly extinct in less than ten years.” The story states that the eggs were worth “$1000 or more each to collectors” and it relates his planned excursion into the Sierra Nevada Mountains in search of condor nests to plunder.
Perhaps most puzzling of all is the fact that some of the most noted egg raiders were ornithologists and zoologists. In other words, they were scholars and scientists one might think would have been more concerned with the preservation of the species rather than trophy hunting and profiteering, actions which obviously would only serve to help drive the California condor closer to extinction.
In a spiraling chain of deadly events that propelled its own momentum, as the California condor became rarer, the value of its eggs increased further incentivizing the taking of yet more eggs. With such remarkable profit as a lure, and virtually no laws or social mores protecting condors of the time, it’s a wonder how the giant vultures survived as well as they did through these precarious times.
Illustrations originally published in National Tribune in 1895 accompanying a story about the taking of a condor egg.
A photo of men climbing in the San Bernardino Mountains “to capture a young condor.” It was originally published in the Arizona Silver Belt in 1908 accompanying the following blurb:
“Among birds threatened with extinction is the condor of California, a very rare species long hunted on account of its plumage and becoming rarer every year. Before long the condor will be harder to find than the epyornis of Madagascar and the dodo. Its eggs are very rare and are valued at from $250 to $300, not to speak of the risks run in securing them. William L. Finley, president of the Oregon Audubon society, has had many thrilling experiences in the San Bernardino mountains studying the condor at close range and photographing the birds. In this picture the scientist and his assistant are shown climbing to a dizzying height to capture a young condor.”
San Roque Canyon, Santa Ynez Mountains.
In a previous entry on this blog, Desperate Fight with Condors: Narrow Escape of Santa Barbara Man (1899), a newspaper story about the taking of a condor egg from a cave in the Santa Ynez Mountains of Santa Barbara was shared. It features two men, Frank Ruiz and Fred Forbush.
The excerpt below represents a select portion of the official record of this incident, as taken from the book authored by Sanford R. Wilbur, “Nine Feet from Tip to Tip.” The excerpt is shared here with express permission from Mr. Wilbur, who led the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s California condor research and recovery program from 1969 to 1981.
Visit his Website, Condor Tales, for further information. An entire chapter in “Nine Feet from Tip to Tip” is dedicated to egg collecting including in the canyons of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Frank Ruiz, Mr. Wilbur told me, took two eggs “apparently both out of San Roque.”
As an aside, the mention below of the work performed by Frank Ruiz and Fred Forbush for the Pacific Improvement Company, in order to supply the Hope Ranch community with water, ties-in with a previous post on this blog regarding water from a well bored into San Roque Canyon used to maintain Laguna Blanca Lake in Hope Ranch.
San Roque Canyon as seen from Laguna Blanca in Hope Ranch.
RECORD NUMBER: 32
DATE: 17 April 1899
LOCATION: San Roque Canyon, Santa Barbara County, California
COLLECTOR: Frank F. Ruiz and Fred Forbush
CURRENT LOCATION: Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge,
Massachusetts)
HISTORY: Frank Ruiz and Fred Forbush, employees of the Pacific Improvement
Company, were surveying in San Roque Canyon near Montecito, California,
preparatory to developing a water supply for Hope Ranch. Two condors flying in the canyon 17 April 1899 attracted their attention, and they followed the birds to the nest
site. W. Lee Chambers (Santa Monica, California) apparently purchased the egg from
Ruiz, then sold it to John E. Thayer (Lancaster, Massachusetts). The Thayer collection
eventually was secured by the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge,
Massachusetts), where the egg is currently.
COMMENTS: The Chambers data slip accompanying this egg gives the collection date
as 13 June 1899. However, a published account that describes the taking of the egg and
gives the date as 17 April 1899, was prepared by the author 2 May 1899 (Redington
1899).
The Chambers data slip located San Roque Canyon in the San Rafael Mountains.
Actually, it is on the south slope of the Santa Ynez Mountains, which are separated
from the San Rafaels by the canyon of the Santa Ynez River.
“On April 17, 1899, an egg of the California Condor was taken in San Roque canon,
near Santa Barbara, by F. Ruiz, a surveyor in the employ of the Pacific Improvement
Co., who, with a party, was doing some work in the canon. His attention was first
attracted by seeing a pair of the birds flying about, and it occurred to him that there
might possibly be a nest in the vicinity…. He and a companion named Forbush
proceeded up the canon, and finally noticed a cave on a high cliff some 150 feet above
the creek, which they managed to reach with some difficulty. From the top Ruiz was
enabled to look over the edge a short distance into the cave, where he saw the egg on
the floor of the cave, with one of the birds crouched on the floor beside the nest, which
consisted of a few twigs of brush and some sand that had evidently blown into the cave
from the edge of the cliff… Then Ruiz clambered down into the cave without the aid of a
rope… The egg was perfectly fresh and measured 4 3-10 x 2 6-10 inches and was a
trifle deeper in color than those I have seen illustrated.”
. . .
“Nest was located upon a high rock in a cliff and was made of twigs, brush, and other
coarse material.” Added statement by Chambers: “The above statement about the nest
is probably literally true as the nest was on a brushy side of the mountain and certain
sticks and grasses had doubtlessly fallen there as has been the case in other instances.
The above date given for the taking of the egg is the latest of any eggs I have record of
yet as the dates heretofore have run from Feb. 17 to May 25 (32 eggs).”
Related Posts:
Condor in a Cage: Time Line of Tradegy | Condor Point |Condor Feather | Whiteacre Peak, Fossilized Bones, Cougar Prints and Condors | California Condor Photos
We’ve befriended a scrub jay.
Murky and mossy, slow-flowing summertime creek.
With the southern Los Padres National Forest currently undergoing its characteristic seasonal broil, and being too brutally hot and dry for hiking many miles, there are a few cooler, less visited nooks I like to retreat to.
While most of the rest of the forest at this time of year can seem eerily quiet and largely devoid of life other than plants, bothersome flies and ticks, this place here is teeming with creatures large and small.
Western pond turtle
Wild rose
Crawdad
Dead mountain lion in the mouth of a shallow cave beside the creek.
A decent sized native southern steelhead, an endangered species, swimming several feet below the surface, as seen from atop a boulder overlooking the creek.
Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure 