Moments in Dirt and Ink

 Strawberry Peak , Angeles National Forest: Mar 11  Chantry Flats to Spruce Grove Campground via Sturtvant Falls , Angeles National Forest: Mar 25  Colby Canyon from Big Tujunga , Angeles National Forest: Apr 1

Gaviota State Park and Los Padres National Forest Locate the trailhead. Out past Gaviota beach, the wrong way on the exit to Lompoc (and right again), is the trail head for the hot springs and peak. The peak is about 3 miles by the springs and about 3.5 miles by trespass trail. Together, they make a loop. Trespass trail is on south and west facing slopes with more obstacles to following the trail. A second trail leaves to the right at the saddle to what may or may not be something interesting. Going straight goes past a dry lake and connects up with the trail up the mountain. Going left would connect up with the trail faster, but there is very little trail there. The route past the hot springs is more direct and road-like almost the entire way, which is mostly western and northern slopes. We (mom and I) headed out a bit past noon on the trespass trail because it is winter and won't be too hot to hike a southern slope even this close to sea level. Also, it apparently h...

Santa Barbara frontcountry Locate the trailhead. The Cold Spring trailhead is on Mountian Drive behind Montecito. Head up Hot Springs and turn left on Mountain to get there. For more extensive and somewhat silly directions, see localhikes.com , which has plenty of other useful information too. For another viewpoint, see here . So, get there, head up the trail on the east side of the stream, and when you get to the fork in the trail, take it! Hahaha. Okay, standard joke out of the way. So, get there, head up the trail on the east side of the stream and go left at the fork to cross the stream and join the trail runners . Some people are just mad about running. Not too long after there's another fork, this time go right and leave the main trail. Very shortly up that there is a third fork, one leading up the narrow canyon and one climbing the hillside. Presumably the falls is up the one on the narrow canyon, but if you've read the second site up there, you might thin...

Robert H. Treman State Park Finger Lakes area, Ithaca, New York Locate the trailhead. We were out in Ithaca to share the secrets of force detected NMR and plant a few seeds for the future and while John had us there, he wanted to show off how Ithaca is gorges. As they say. We were given bus passes to make our way up to Cornell and back down, but were encouraged to walk through the gorge back at least once, which we did. We also took a field trip one morning up to another of the local gorges. John (NY) didn't lead this one; I think it was Dan (IBM) who instigated it bringing along Dan (CIT) and John (UW) and a few of us helper bees in a couple of cars. It turns out the MRFM community values a moment surrounded by nature. We parked at the bottom and hiked up along the river, oohing and ahing the flows and chatting away. Lots of dark, flat rocks make a natural flooring for the river bed. Our first waterfall along the way.

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. This is my second trip in this area. The first was last May. Ah, let us go on a short little trip to stretch our legs. And let us rest up somewhere far from the hum of electrical lines overnight. Yes, that is a good idea. And thus it was decided that we should have a lazy weekend backpacking trip. At least on my side. Apparently, the other side simply desired to put to use her equipment since she had never actually been backpacking before. There was also a demand that there not be a ranger at the campground watching TV or other horrors along the lines of being near people who were not, in fact, "roughing it". This demand was met. The second demand that there be as much water in the canyon as the pictures from May show was not met, as a simple comparison of some of these pictures will show. It turned out that there was still enough water so disappointment did not set in due to this unmet demand. Being a rather s...

 Trail Canyon Trail , Angeles National Forest: Feb 11-12  Treman Gorge , Robert H. Treman State Park, Ithaca, New York: Jun 22  Tangerine Falls , Angeles National Forest: Nov 25  Gaviota Peak , Gaviota State Park and Los Padres National Forest: Dec 25

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. Another day, another hike. Today the map was stabbed a little further east up highway 39 instead of in the veritable backyard. There, one can find the West Fork National Scenic Bikeway, an old road still kept paved to a single lane for traffic to the dam, but locked to keep out general traffic. This route is indeed scenic, if you get off the road and into the trees. That's where this little tributary was spotted.

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. Ravi and myself decided to hike out at Henninger Flats for the day, but we were balked by the rather high and rather locked fence. It claimed there were "dangerous conditions", one can only assume it meant the rather obvious massive land slide occurring just the other side of the river from the rather high and rather locked fence. People where down there, so there must be a way in, but it didn't look all that attractive so we didn't look that hard. Instead, we went over to Millard Canyon. For this hike, you can start at a campground maybe a quarter of a mile from the Falls or you can start high up the canyon on a fire road a little more than a mile from the falls. We climbed down from the fire road, which was a pleasant hike, well kept since all the switchback cutters aren't hiking it. The poison oak was out in patches, turning red with the fall. This trail put us at the entrance to Millard campground, wh...