Moments in Dirt and Ink

Sketches created "in situ" for December. A glance over the mountain to see the ocean. Some fall color along the line of water. It gets rocky near the top of the mountains . An oak providing some of the rare shade along the trail .

Santa Barbara front country Map link. I don't remember ever going all the way up Tunnel Trail and set myself to doing so. It is very near to Rattlesnake Canyon, which was such a common trail for us as children. The trail follows Mission Canyon up and has a number of other trails coming to it. Hiking starts at a gate on Tunnel Road and proceeds up a utility road. Jesusita splits off to the left as the trail starts properly a ways up the road from the gate. About halfway up, the Rattlesnake connector trail joins from the right. At the top, it meets with Camino Cielo as the road to Gibraltar Dam turns off. The trail was apparently the route used to build the tunnel from the dam but existed before that. As near as I can tell, reading an old guide book , this was either the La Cumbre trail (as it comes up near that peak, so most probable) or Las Canoas (which as near as I can tell is what we call Rattlesnake now. The streets of the area still bear the name.) This was th

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area Map link. From the time we hiked the upper canyon area, I'd wanted to hike the lower canyon. I didn't then know what was there. The folks at Hike the Geek planned to go there and at first I'd remembered wanting to go. After reading a little bit about it, I remembered that I had actually got up there one afternoon and done a couple sketches although I didn't have the camera that previous time. I decided I would go again anyway. Trails make a number of loops of different sizes and further trails hike up the canyon after the loop. The largest loop is about 3 miles with a high road and a low road. The high road gives views of the ocean and odd houses in the neighboring canyon and an overview of the canyon. The low road passes by old ruined cabins with more just off it. Little waterfalls tumble down the canyon near the largest ruins of an elaborate estate. A couple signs give a little history for the most subst

Los Padres National Forest Map link. Looking around for hike suggestions, I clicked on this hike , thinking, "Alder Creek is in LA!" I miss the now somewhat recently burned and still closed Alder Creek trail and decided to try out this one. The directions on that site tend to be sketchy at best, but Franklin Trail is easy to find on the Carpinteria and White Ledge Peak quadrangles. It comes down to Juncal Road along the Jameson Reservoir on the back side, and that goes west to something that may be driven by the public (when the road is open), namely Romero Camuesa, which is the continuation of Camino Cielo after an intersection with no other open choices. Just find a place to park that isn't blocking the gate nor on the road a few feet after the ford of the Santa Ynez River, then start hiking up the closed road. The road behind the gate is currently a lot better than the road in front of the gate. It probably helps to have very little travel. The regular ga

The sketches for the month. The large oak on the east side of Cottam Camp in Blue Canyon . The blue rocks upstream of Cottam Camp in Blue Canyon . A small sheltered hole along the stream below Tangerine Falls . The red cliffs along Agua Caliente .

Los Padres National Forest Map link. Agua Caliente Trail once provided a fairly direct route between ranger stations at Pendola and Potrero Seco (the later now just a campground) connecting to a couple other trails along the way. The route is likely to still be traversable, but actual trail finding may not be possible after about 4 miles. On the Potrero Seco side, a couple OHV routes follow increasingly close to the old route of the trail, but that isn't the side I hiked. On the Pendola side, the trail starts at a warm spring. The water is directed into a deep tub and the area is popular just for coming to soak in the naturally heated water. The trail heads out from the end of the road, past a debris dam, and generally follows the creek up. Access can be blocked by the closure of one of two gates on the dirt roads, usually due to weather. The roads are currently getting a little bad, but are kept up to be passable by passenger vehicles until a deep water ford just arou

Santa Barbara front country Map link. My sister and her husband wanted a hike while they were in town, so I needed to find something that wasn't too long or upward facing, but of course still wanted to get somewhere. I decided to go up San Ysidro again to see the little waterfall. It was quite crowded when we got there, but there were a few spaces left. Getting to the trailhead, we found a table was set up nearby to give runners in the successor to the 9-trail race some water. We saw a few runners going both directions as we headed up the trail. The trail starts off at the end of that bit of East Mountain Road and progresses up between two properties to a private road, then follows a dirt path on the stream side along that for a bit before leaving the houses. There was a nice little flow down in the stream a short way below the level of the road. Then the pavement ends at a gate and the trail follows the dirt road for a bit. A signed trail leads to the right at the g

Santa Barbara Front Country Locate the trailhead. It finally rains a nice, soaking rain and I get tempted to go chasing after waterfalls. Sure, a soaking rain doesn't actually run off so much and the waterfall won't actually be spectacular yet, but the temptation can be quite great. Also, I'd found that this one had a route (as opposed to a trail) that takes one to the bottom of the waterfall and then connects with the trail above. I was a little suspicious about the connection as a reasonable route, but decided to try it. I got myself up to Cold Spring trailhead again and wandered up the trail, this time turning left at the sign to head up the main and west forks of the stream. Well... except I left the water behind in doing so. I continued on to the waterfall in spite of now following a dry creek bed. Some great rocks along the trailside. But then I can hear water again... except it's coming through the pipe that travels along the trail.

Bronson Canyon Park Locate the trailhead. I joined the geeks for another hike, this one to pass through the old "Bat Cave" of the Batman TV show and up to the Hollywood sign. I was sort of in the neighborhood and I have managed to never be anywhere near the remains of the Hollywoodland sign, so I thought I might go. Besides, Bat cave! So I got there and waited for more to come and found some new folks trying it out for the first time and then a few old folks and finally our leader, uncharacteristically late. Once gathered, we headed up the road and took the right at a fork to get to the "cave". Apparently, this is the Bat Cave, or at least the entrance, even though it is not a cave at all. After poking around the tunnel, which had a couple more off it before getting all the way through, we headed back to the fork and took the left to start climbing toward the sign. We had a fair bit of up to do to get up to it, but initially went a little bit

Los Padres National Forest 8th of November, 2011 Map the trailhead. Following hiking the front country half of Cold Spring, I decided to hike (some of) the back country portion of the trail. There were no threats of rain coming the next day, so it was nice and clear when I got to the spot the trail crosses Camino Cielo. I got out the camera to take a photo of the great expanse of land to the north and sea to the south that I hadn't been able to see when I climbed up to this spot and the camera said "change the batteries". Whoops. Once I had the same batteries in a flashlight, now I don't. They had been charged just a few days earlier, so should have been fine. It might really be time to change the batteries, but for now I tossed it back into the car and headed off a half pound lighter than I would have. And took a few more moments to take in the sea of sea and sea of mountains. Taking Cold Spring into the backcountry offers a few options. The sign at

Santa Barbara Front Country Map the trailhead. I hiked up Cold Spring trail from E. Mountain up to E. Camino Cielo and hit Montecito peak on the way back down. I started off well enough. I got directions from the Independent that told me to turn on Foothill/192 from Hot Springs, then down Cold Spring and park by the creek. I missed 192 because it is actually Sycamore, so got to Mountain and turned toward Cold Spring, thus finding the trail head which is on Mountain a bit east of the road called Cold Spring. I guess sometimes two wrongs do make a right. Three trails apparently leave from the creek. The one on the west side just goes far enough to find a good place to cross and then joins the main trail. The easternmost trail climbs to join the main trail much further up forming the other side of "the loop", if the map the Independent had is more accurate than their directions. The middle trail is the main trail and is signed with mileages for various destinations

The one sketch for the month. Little bit of water flowing down the wall of the North Fork .

Los Padres National Forest Locate the trailhead. I opened up my Forest Service map for the Los Padres NF and picked a trail. There were actually two trails out of the trail head I was looking at, but one was along a larger blue line so looked more attractive. It followed the north fork of the Matilija Creek up for quite a ways starting just a few miles behind Ojai. A little research indicates that the trail up the main fork is the more popular one with a waterfall or swimming holes before it as destination, but there is a private property dispute along it. This dispute does not affect the north fork at all. Signs at the trail head make it clear where the dispute is although the public trail was well established and used for decades before they purchased it and they cannot actually bar the public from using the trail. Other entry, yes, but trail use, no. There's some indication that people can get permission to pass, if one wanted to go that direction without any worrie

Sketches for the month. Baldy hiding behind a tree across Vincent Gap . The creek by the campground. The view from near the lookout location on South Mount Hawkins . A bit of fog. Kelp on the beach.

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. When doing the loop of trails out of Crystal Lake that brought me up to the top of Islip, I noted that the map I was handed marked a trail along Hawkins Ridge as well, allowing for another loop that stops by the two Mt. Hawkins. To do it, I again traveled up to Windy Gap, then turned east along the Pacific Crest Trail, the only direction I hadn't yet traveled from Windy Gap that contained a trail. Climbing up, the ridge trail leaves to the south, then a trail to Lily Spring. The mountain rises as a cliff to the south and at the far side, a trail proceeds up the top of Mt. Hawkins. Proceeding back to the ridge trail, I traveled down along the ridge down to South Mt. Hawkins. After taking in the view from there, I traveled back along the fire road until it crossed the trail and followed the trail back down from there. The lot in the campground next to the trail head was still closed with most of the campground, so I parked behi

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead and the end of the trail. After hiking over to Big Horn Mine, I stopped at Buckhorn to look for a camping spot so that I might hike around one of the many trails in the area again the next day as well completely neglecting that it was a three day weekend and the campground would be a madhouse. The sites were overfull with people packing three cars and over a dozen humans into sites that only allow two cars and eight people. I walked down the trail a short way to read for a bit, then turned to go home and found the sun to be at a level that completely blocked my vision when going in the direction the road goes. In the campground, I could just stop and get a view of where I was going, but I wouldn't want to miss a turn at speed. I decided to really see where the road at the end of (what is now) Buckhorn's exit really got to. I parked in the turnout in front of the old road and made my way up its water rutted route to near th

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. The area around Iron Mountain is riddled with mines. I've got a hike hitting many of those mines in my dream hikes, but that has not happened yet. While looking around the map for the various mines, I found one far up north that would be much easier to get to as it was down an unimproved road just a couple miles from the highway. Looking it up, I found that it is a popular hike that is still possible to make and that the cabin of the man the gap and gulch it starts at is named for can be viewed nearby. They say it follows the old wagon road to the mine, but I'm not so sure that's entirely true, although it is probably close enough. I printed out a map and headed to Vincent Gap. Vincent Gulch is a wide open valley heading down toward the San Gabriel River (prairie fork going to the east fork). Mount Baldy is visible in the background and the Blue Ridge is to the east. The trail starts next to the Pacific Cr

Sketches for the month. The stoves at Little Jimmy Campground . The cabin at the top of Mount Islip . Somewhere up Bear Canyon a ways. The remains of a sea wall past Goleta. Smoke from a dry lightning strike. We watched it get put out from the mountain top . A few bristlecone relatives with very little bark left at the top of the mountain . Roots that come through the rock .

Circle X Ranch Mountain Recreation and Conservation Authority Locate the trailhead. I had read about a trail to a place that was full of funkyness and a good place to go on those hot days as the destination is shady and has pools of water and water flowing around, at least after the rains. The general plan for hot days seemed to be hike down and wait until it is cool while playing on the boulders then hike back up. This was a hot day and I really wanted a hike, but it wouldn't be expected to be flowing very well. I decided to try it out anyway. I had errands to do before hiking, so didn't get started until the middle of the afternoon. I had a bit of an extra drive getting there because the directions missed a turn. Even the gooogle maps directions missed a turn. Something about being on two roads that are actually the same, then a third joins and one of the original roads continues while the other two turn... Anyway, my directions said to be on the one that continu