San Rafael: Big Cone Spruce and Cachuma Mountain

Los Padres National Forest

DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4  |  DAY 5  |  DAY 6


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I awoke in the dark to mist on my face. The night had been clear with bright stars shining where I could see through the leaves, but had turned dark. My light showed more mist coming down. It was raining. I could see quite a bit of water on my quilt already. It had been raining for a while. I looked around for some rocks to hold down the emergency blanket again and saw a blanket of white developing. It was actually snowing. The breezes of the evening had died to nothing and it was the most peaceful moment looking out on that fluff dropping down. And then I had to get up and deal with it. The emergency blanket is a lot easier to deploy a second time, so I got it open, got some rocks to hold it down, and tucked in underneath my rain coat to sleep the rest of the night away and get up to a blanket of white.

It is an all new camp in the snow and early morning light.

There is not quite an inch to what has stuck of the snow. Not so bad. The thing is, today I get a little over a mile of trail that is new to me just like yesterday, only it climbs 1400 feet from this camp to the road above in 1.2 miles and it is rumored to be bushy and hard to navigate. Now it is bushy, hard to navigate, and covered in what is likely to be an increasingly deep layer of snow. I set about breakfast, packing my wet gear, and admiring how the area that was all deep browns yesterday such that the iron sign was hard to see against the background of dirt, tree litter, and tree, is now a high contrast two color world. My feet are not yet wet, so I can appreciate that the snow is quite pretty. I head out on the trail where bay branches are hanging low with snow. A little encouragement with a stick gets them to pop up from chest height to overhead. There is soon a marker for the second site and I pause to check it out too. The table is a bit more solid, having never been hit by a tree and repaired.

Just one of the many bay branches that drop down into the way when weighted down by snow.

The upper camp at Big Cone Spruce with its better table.

Soon I feel a time pressure from the sun as it creeps down the side of the canyon and into the upper reaches of the trees. I really better get going. This place is about to start to rain. I head back to the trail and up as it leaves the creek and climbs past the trees.

Here comes the sun.

Without the snow, I would never have known about the raccoon that crossed the log before I stepped over it.

Looking back along the trail after breaking free of the trees.

I had a worrying but tiny slip on the trail to the second camp where it was steep, but the actual trail is not so bad even with snow on it. There are not a lot of choices for where to go and even without being able to see the tread, I have no question about the trail. It is brushy, but half of the things reaching out into the trail are ceanothus heavy with snow. When I give them a whack with my hiking sticks, they spring up to stand tall and well out of my way.

One snowy trail headed rather too directly up the side of the mountain. Half the brush will spring out of the way once the snow is shaken off.

Mist is starting to rise in the canyon coming off San Rafael Mountain. Also, um, in the camera lens.

A little higher showing the rocky crowns of the valley and Hurricane Deck with a little snow.

The blanket of snow gets thicker as I climb. The brush is not bad so long as I knock most the snow off before walking through. Usually when a section of brush is long and I am standing with it pushing on me from both sides trying to knock more snow off ahead, I just charge through. Every time, I am rewarded with a chunk of snow right down my back. It takes the tolerable and slow to miserable. Fortunately, I can dig it out quickly to make the miserable short lived.

My own tracks in the fresh snow. Hiking poles and trail runners.

The ditch from water draining down the trail is still visible under the as yet untracked snow.

The snow gets thicker still. As my poor, abused lens goes from bad to unusable, I am faced with a bit of a dilemma. As I try to take a picture at full zoom that comes out a nearly uniform grey, I finally realize that I could take the same photo at the widest setting on the other lens. That lens has had more neglect than abuse. It should be fine, except that sometimes it takes some creativity to get the subject in frame.

Bald Mountain just becoming visible behind the hill and it has a bit of snow on it. New lens so that it is not a mess of grey.

Each ridge in the line is quite distinctive.

As I near the top, I start to think that the snow has finished getting deeper, then notice it has become as deep as my shoes are high. There are more prints in the snow toward the top. My other wilderness entries had nice signs, but this one has nothing. Not even a sticker on the metal post with a trail sticker.

A different view of the sign at the top of the trail.

And so I have finished the last little bit of new trail and just have to walk down the road. I have walked down it in sun and lingering rain, so this blanket of white crossed by rabbit and bird tracks is a different perspective.

A humming bird in the snow.

Clouds sweeping past the ridge while walking the snow covered road. Well, some spots have managed to be clear.

The road ahead looks nice and dry and Ranger Peak looks quite the same as I left it a few days ago.

The snow stops quite suddenly at a line drawn across the landscape. There are some small drifts caught on the wrong side of the line, but it looks like I found the edge of the storm.

The end of the line for snow is just around the corner and my shoes still are not particularly wet.

The end of the snow is the end of threats of wet shoes and rolling over hidden rocks. The hidden rocks on slopes were starting to get to me. It does mean that everything looks just about normal again.

Approaching Hells Half Acre again. There does seem to be the littlest bit of snow on the north side in sheltered spots.

Another look down onto Lake Cachuma.

Nearly to the picnic table around four miles from the road.

My plans had put Cachuma Mountain as optional and probably. It seems to have a crazy slide area the use trail passes through, but it probably had that before and I did fine through it and thus forgot all about it. Plenty of day left, I may as well go up it. It is right there. Very very steep and right there. Up I go.

The elevation mark on the top of Cachuma Mountain. That is three out of nine planned. And three out of four attempted. And only one was new.

The snow looks quite thin already on San Rafael Mountain.

The full stretch of Hurricane Deck from Castle Rock to White Ledge. (Click for a bigger version, of course.)

I take a while at the top and start trying to pick out peaks. There is a distinctive end to the Santa Ynez Mountains, so one of those bumps must be Gaviota Peak. Not the highest at the end, though. Antennas on a peak to the north must be McPherson and the big one just to the left Peak Mountain. Something to the right should be Fox Mountain, but I am not certain at all. An interesting bump in the ranches could be Loma Alta. Then I poke my way toward trails going down the other side, but the one heading toward the water tower does not go very far. I was thinking one rocky section on that side looked rather hard to navigate on that side. I head back the way I came and then remember about halfway down that people do use and report using the north ridge. I was sort of trying the northwest one. Ah well. I head on out the long way.

Now far below Cachuma Mountain.

©2018 Valerie Norton
Posted 28 Apr 2018