Moments in Dirt and Ink

Stopping above the spring that POURS out water. Fall color trip , but my gold watercolors weren't in the collection today.

Los Padres National Forest Click for map. I could not help noticing a bit of fall color as I drove up the 33 last week. I had sort of been wanting to do Middle Sespe once some water gets flowing, but decided bright yellow cottonwoods might be a good excuse to come see it too. It keeps escaping my notice because it seems to parallel the Sespe River Road, and what would be the point of hiking that? I find a turnout about 250 feet past the nearly unmarked trail, or at least 250 feet from the coordinate I have for it. It would have taken a lot of looking without the GPS, especially in the dark. I decided I should treat light like it is important to me and get to the trail as the dawn was breaking. It is a little earlier than planned, but that just gives me time to get my shoes and sunscreen on. There is just barely enough light to walk by once I am ready to hit the trail. I head back down the road to the waypoint. Dirt and rocks have been piled up on the old road down into Beaver, di...

Santa Barbara front country Click for map. I was wanting to go up the canyon again but also thinking it is more of a social hike when I noticed it was also about the be lead by the local Sierra Club. Perfect! I can just show up and wander up with them. I was a little worried that it might still be a red flag day. It was Friday evening and those of us who noticed had an extra mile to hike up the road while those of us who did not came back to find the CHP had plastered warning stickers on everything a little after 7PM. The sign warns of towing, so it could have been worse. Today is not so bad except for the usual crowds. I get lucky because everyone is passing up the spot on the end because it looks too small. I go ahead and try it with the dinky car and it fits with a few feet to spare to let the Florida plates in front of me get out. Others are stuck walking a half mile up anyway, mostly because the turnout that is big enough to take cars head in is entirely parked parallel. Ah,...

Los Padres National Forest Click for map. When I first hiked up Chorro Grande , I found myself crossing a road and as I climbed further I noticed it was quite obvious and fairly clear and generally not falling off the mountain. I checked my map and there it was. The far east side stops near a spot that simply says "spring". Ever since, I have been meaning to check it out. Years passed, a fire burned the lower section closing it shortly, another couple years passed. It is certainly about time that I actually did it. Not only that, it seems like a while since I have done something exploratory. I did get disheartened when I saw a geocache log saying it would be a long time before anyone followed that road again, but there is an easy plan B to be had: just stop by the Ortega benchmark and try to work up from there. So now, I am once again at the bottom of Chorro Grande, but only meaning to go up halfway. The bottom of Chorro Grande Trail. The road sign is not placed to ...

San Bernardino National Forest Mount San Jacinto State Park August 1992 Camp Mountain Meadows, up near Isabella Lake, had a wonderful backpacking program, but I had already gone there for two of their backpacking units. Probably as a change of pace, I decided to try out a new camp. Camp Tautona should have a good program as it was one of the many organizational camps on the north side of San Gorgonio with access to the wilderness in a drive of approximately 5 minutes. There were only four of is at first and we were collected in with the CIT unit for general stuff since they were our age. There were an even dozen of them. They were given an option to join up with us and we got two or three more from that. The camp was different from the others I had been to. We had concrete platforms with roofs that we could put the metal cots on in bad weather, but would usually had them out under the stars. At Mountain Meadows we only had our backpacking equipment and at Tecuya we were told ...

Just the one, but it was fun. Peaks and trees along the view to Cucamonga Peak .

Santa Barbara front country Click for location. It is National Public Lands Day and that means there are many volunteer opportunities all over the forests, parks, and even BLM areas. Oh, and probably a few conservancy areas as well as city and county parks. It is also a fee free day on federal lands and whoever else is participating in fee free days. The gas to get to anything charging a fee and participating in the fee free day that is seems a bit silly to try to enjoy just one particularly crowded day once there. So, I am out to join a volunteer effort. Our Wednesday night sojourns up Tunnel Trail have shown that the brush is getting quite tight, so I went for the closest one which would set about fixing that. The typical Tunnel Trail view down the canyon and over the city. I can see the hill behind the house from here! Today, city and county parks seem to be in charge. We do not have any advantages in getting parking today, but once at the gate, we do get to hop into veh...

Los Padres National Forest Click for map. The weekend comes with an offer of led hikes by the Sierra Club for all who show up at the Bank of America at State and Hope by 9 AM, except for the occasional missed day or early meet time. (The hikes are listed here , here , or here .) I decided to take them up on the offer. Today is an early meet time because the drive out to Figueroa Mountain is a bit long, but it is not so hard to get out somewhere by 8 AM. The group numbered 10 as we headed out and still did when we got to the trailhead in the tough part of Davy Brown Campground. It is so tough, in fact, that we were asked to park in a somewhat different spot by the current occupants of the last camp site so they could use the parking area instead of the road as an exit route. They did not like their chances with the road, which was surprising considering the cavernous clearance the pickup had. We reparked and they were happy and so we could head out down the rest of the increasing...