Leaning In To The Long Dark Nights

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend Jesse and I wanted to explore somewhere new, but also not drive too far. About a 40 minute drive from here is Happy Canyon Road which leads deep into the Los Padres. I’ve been to the end of the road several times for hiking. The road ends in a Wilderness area, not to be confused with wilderness. I refer to it as Capital W Wilderness. This distinction is very important to cyclists because the detailed language of areas officially designated as Wilderness bans all “mechanized” travel. Since bikes have chains and gears, we are forbidden to enter those areas with a bike, even if we are willing to carry the bike through to the other side of the Wilderness before we resume pedaling. I’ll spare you the details of the long history and continuing acrimony on this topic. Suffice it to say that as a back country explorer whose preferred mode of transportation is the bicycle, these laws are very frustrating. That said, our aim was not the end of the road deep in Wilderness, but Cachuma Saddle part way out Happy Canyon Road where two bike legal roads head off, one to the east and another to the west. (FYI to locals: Happy Canyon Road is also closed beyond this point for road construction that I believe is scheduled to be completed this spring.) Our primary target was the forest road leading off to the east. However, the first night we just enjoyed camping in Caracol on the side of the road; we chose a spot that would receive light as late into the evening (um, afternoon) as possible.

The next morning we drove the last bit up to Cachuma Saddle and started biking the old fire road to McKinley Spring Camp where water was reportedly flowing. It was a beautiful crisp cool day – perfect for riding!

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On the way up, after we had passed the machete, we met two young women hiking down. They let us know that there was also sketchy garbage left in the camp (picture right, above). They had felt unsafe and hiked past camp closer to McKinley Peak trail and had suffered a brutally windy sleepless night. They said the following morning the pile of belongings in the camp had not been moved so whomever it belonged to probably wasn’t around. We appreciated the head’s up and when we arrived at camp it was as they had described. We weren’t overly worried about the possible presence of a questionable campmate, but more importantly, the camp was FREEZING cold. It was midday and sunny out, but only a small amount of sun filtered in and it was down right frigid. We were not interested in camping here. We filled up on water from the spring and hoped we could find a camp spot further along that also was not on the exposed saddle where the women had camped the night before. Just a few hundred feet past camp there was a protected pull out on the side of the road; the perfect size for our little tent. We set up our tent and headed up toward the saddle where we planned to hike to a couple of nearby summits.

Upon reaching the saddle, first we stashed our bikes in the bushes and headed north to hike to the summit of San Rafael Mountain (6,593ft; in the Wildernesss). It was such an unobtrusive summit we had actually hiked quite some distance past it before we realized our error and back tracked to the “peak”. The area beyond the summit was actually the most beautiful of our entire trip so we didn’t mind the extra hiking. We later heard that Mission Pine Springs Camp further along that trail was a great camp, so maybe someday we will return. There were a lot of backpackers out enjoying the long weekend. This was actually Thanksgiving Day and Jesse and I had a long talk about the colonial nature of the holiday and whitewashing of the true history of theft and genocide that settlers imposed on the Indigenous people already living here. As much as I love the idea of a holiday whose modern premise is giving thanks (and not stuff!) I have been considering giving up any celebration of Thanksgiving because of this history. We discussed the benefits of creating a day of our own in a different month where we gathered with loved ones to break bread and share our appreciation of each other. However, we were concerned that if this celebration too closely mimicked a traditional Thanksgiving it would feel contrived and not really separate itself from the problems with Thanksgiving. We also discussed whether it was perhaps better to continue to celebrate Thanksgiving, but commit ourselves to always having honest and sometimes awkward conversations about the problems with the fairy tale of a shared, joyous meal between the “Pilgrims and Indians”. I wouldn’t say we came to any decisive conclusions, but it is important to have the conversation and to not ignore the truth.

Returning to the saddle and our bikes we still had plenty of daylight left so we also did the short but steep and scratchy overgrown hike to McKinley Summit (6,182ft) as well. McKinley is a much more pronounced peak with ocean views.

We had one more potential objective from this saddle. The road was supposed to continue on and connect to Santa Cruz Camp. I had been to Santa Cruz Camp once before from the East and had been told that the road that continued past Santa Cruz to Cachuma Saddle (where we now stood) was impassable with downed trees from the 2007 Zaca fire and that basically the road didn’t exist anymore. We were interested in trying this old road bed out from this western end and seeing how far we could get toward Santa Cruz Camp. This is such an important connection between mountain regions and many folks are interested in knowing the status of this erstwhile “road (FR 8N08)”. At the saddle we were flummoxed when no road continued on to the southeast. In the distance we could see the old road bed on what looked to be a miserably steep climb, but no road in front of us. After poking around a bit we finally found the old road bed a little ways down the hill. Despite the fact that it looked like it would probably be Type 2 fun (fun when it was over and you were telling the stories) we thought we would return the next day and see how far we could get.

Meanwhile we made our way back to camp and quickly put on all of our clothes and started making dinner in the last light of the day. It gets dark and cold fast this time of year!

Our camp choice was prime. All night we could hear the wind whipping above, but only a little bit of it was permeating the bushes and hitting our tent. We slept the long night away, assuming the wind would stop in the morning — as it had the day prior. Morning came and the wind was still going strong. Jesse and I had the same thought — we don’t want to go explore that old unmaintained ridge road in high winds. The wind seemed likely to turn the explorations into Type 3 fun (ie. never actually fun, even after the fact). We decided it was time to head back to the bus, but we stopped for one more hike into the Wilderness on the way out. We hiked the 2 miles down to Big Cone Spruce Camp just to look around and see if there was any water running. It turned out to be an incredibly steep fall-line trail; I don’t recommend it! The camp itself was ok and there was good clean water running in the nearby creek. Water is always the limiting factor of what you can do and where you camp here if you are wondering why I am always mentioning it! A steeeep hike back out and we were back to the bikes and enjoying a mostly downhill coast back to the bus for an afternoon of chilling out at Cachuma Saddle.

Staying in the bus is nice on these long cold nights. We can set up the table and play cards and eat inside. We can also pop the top for standing room, though that does keep it colder inside. I’m sure we were still in bed by 7pm for another 12+ hours of sleep :). It’s a good thing Jesse and I both love to read! The next morning we biked up the paved road on the back side of Figueroa Mountain where we could then ride a closed dirt road the final couple miles to the summit (4,528ft). As mentioned, there aren’t many trails open to bikes in this area and those that are bike legal tend not to be very well maintained or built for biking. It really is more of a hiking area. However, we couldn’t resist some single track even if it meant hike-a-bike. It ended up involving not only hike-a-bike, but bush whacking as well. That’s ok, it’s not really an adventure until you are pushing your bike up steep trails while your legs are getting thrashed by overgrown pokey bushes.

We eventually made it back to the bus and decided it was time to head home. Part way back out the remote Happy Canyon Road the gas pedal suddenly came disconnected from whatever gas pedals normally connect to under vehicles! That was exciting :). Fortunately it happened on flat road where we could safely pull over before we lost all momentum. The worst of the curvy and rough road was behind us, but we still didn’t have cell reception. Jesse pedaled up the road until he got signal and called AAA. Eventually after dark they found us and towed us back to town. After leaving the bus at our mechanic’s shop the tow truck driver was nice enough to drop us off at home. Believe it or not the shop had the required part and we had the bus back for less than $100 on Monday! Thanks to Cory Motors and my buddy Mike!! An exciting end to an exciting weekend. What’s next? Rain is coming, yay!! And after that solstice and the onset of ever so slightly longer days.