Dough Flat Walkabout

The Striated Bluffs of Whiteacre Peak

Many years ago, when I first came to Ventura County and before I got my Los Padres "forest legs," I made the long drive out of Fillmore up Squaw Flat Road (6N16) to see Dough Flat. I don't really know what compelled me back then since Dough Flat is generally not touted as much of a scenic destination, but I had noticed 6N16 stabbing deep into the Los Padres National Forest from the south on maps and I was intrigued by the relative isolation of the spot. So I made the drive just to satisfy my curiosity. When I arrived, a couple of rag-tag characters were loitering about the small gravel parking area. They stared me down as I rolled through like I had interrupted some nefarious activity, so I just kept moving. At least that is how I remember it now. In truth, they were probably just a couple of dirty backpackers who were surprised to see someone else make the trek to Dough Flat. Regardless, I stayed away for a couple of decades as the place just didn't spark my imagination or feel that inviting.

Last weekend I decided to return to the scene of the original crime. Half of the adventure in going to Dough Flat is getting there. Squaw Flat Road, which begins in Fillmore as Goodenough Road, is initially paved. As the road wends its way north and gains elevation, that pavement deteriorates eventually turning into gravel. The lower section of the road, which is routinely used to access the numerous oil leases that dot the area, is fairly well maintained. Past the last oil lease about 1/2 mile before roads end however, the track steepens a bit and becomes considerably more rocky. It's all negotiable without 4-wheel drive, but the going is slow.

View Across the Sespe Creek Drainage and Into the Condor Sanctuary

Bluffs Along the Whiteacre Ridgeline

When I arrived at Dough Flat this time I found the parking area completely empty. A sense of isolation came over me as I pulled on my boots and began up the Alder Creek Trail. Before I even reached the wilderness boundary, I encountered huge piles of scat on the path which I would continue to see throughout the day. This is undoubtedly bear country although it really doesn't look like it. I always imagine bears in lush green forests ribbonned with flowing water and festooned with lakes. This is definitely not that. It is an arid and inhospitable place of rust and tan and prickly plants.

I didn't really have an agenda for the day other doing a bit of exploring. I first wandered up to Squaw Flat and kicked around at a guerrilla camp I found there located in a clump of trees. After that, I continued up the gently rising path to the split with the trail out to Ant Camp and scouted routes up Pts. 4082 and 4706. The left fork of the trail took me out to Cow Spring Camp where I lunched at the fairly unattractive trail camp and searched without success for the spring after which the place is named. Water is so yesterday in this parched landscaped of the new millennium. I did, however, locate a Forest Service benchmark (EM 22) trailside around Stone Corral next to a rock formation I dubbed the Backcountry Throne.

Trailhead Signage en Espanol. The English language version is vandalized.

Entering the Sespe Wilderness

Whiteacre Peak from the Alder Creek Trail

Squaw Creek Drainage

Point 4082 from Squaw Flat

View South toward Dough Flat

Point 4082 (left) and 4706 (right)

Doubling back to the trail split, I followed the track out toward Bucksnort Spring to see if I could find water there. A trail guide I have from the late 1980s said that the spring was "fouled and useless." But that guide was written in an era when cattle and mountain bikes had free reign of the land. Now it is wilderness and a condor sanctuary.

Over a small rise and up a drainage, I spied a knot of green that looked out of place in the sea of brown. This was clearly Bucksnort Spring. I followed an obvious use trail up to where the spring is supposed to be where I found another guerrilla campsite, but no surface water. The greenery was no mere happenstance, however. There is water here, but it must all be subterranean at this stage.

On the way back to the parking area I scouted Sulphur and Whiteacre Peaks. Both are in the Condor Sanctuary and technically off limits, but I know they have both been scaled by intrepid adventurers who shall remain nameless. Suffice it to say that of the two, Whiteacre is the easier to access. Anecdotally, Sulphur, which is further away, has to be attacked from the Tar Creek side since any approach from the Pigeon Flat area is reputed to be chocked with brush. But the forest service has been forced to close Tar Creek because people don't know how to behave in the backcountry. So until that changes, Sulphur Peak seems to me a very difficult proposition.

View North to the Sespe Backcountry

Cow Spring Trail Camp

Forest Service Benchmark EM 22

The Backcountry Throne

Back at the parking area I found myself still completely alone. Not really surprising given the effort required to get to Dough Flat and the lack of an immediate "wow" or payoff, that many forest visitors are looking for and expect. Of course, I was completely content with the solitude. I pulled out my chair, removed my boots, cracked a cold beer, and listened to the light breeze rustling through the scrub and the faint but perceptible hum of the land.

Blue Sky

Cow Spring Area from Stone Corral

Native Flora

Santa Paula Canyon: Be One With Nature

The Chapel Tower at Thomas Aquinas College

Just north of Steckel Park, where the locals gather on Sunday afternoons to bond and drink bad beer beneath the ancient Oaks and Sycamore that flank Highway 150, Santa Paula Creek spills into the flood plain from the remote depths of the Los Padres National Forest. Although the creek’s precise location is not immediately obvious to the casual observer, masked as it is by lush campus of Thomas Aquinas College, its existence, and the means to access it, are anything but a secret. In fact, it’s probably not too much of an over-statement to say that Santa Paula Canyon, and the creek that pulses through it, have attained almost legendary status amount Ventura County hikers and outdoor enthusiasts of all stripes.

Like other immensely popular destinations, water is the magnetic draw here. Not just water that trickles along a rocky streambed and collects in stagnant and ephemeral pools. But clear blue water that in the right season gushes forth from the folds and creases of the mountainside to furiously tumble and cascade over the stoney cliff faces into swimming pool-sized “punch bowls” below.
These punch bowls, and the falls that continually feed them, are very special and unique places in this otherwise arid, waterless landscape. But water, particularly if one can swim in it, is an attractive nuisance that always seems to draw a certain element. And that element always finds a way to make a complete mockery of the “leave no trace” ethos that the rest of us try damn hard to practice.

Santa Paula Creek Flowing Muddy Brown

Be One With Nature by Marking it Up

Trial Markings Just in Case You're Confused About the Way Forward Here

Reflections in a Trail-side Pool

The Forested Path Up the Canyon

Orange

Yellow

Cream

Down Canyon

Geology

Up Canyon

These destructive folks about whom I speak know all about Santa Paula Creek. And they have memorialized their visits to this canyon in bright red, blue, green, and purple spray-paint that is visible on virtually every tree, branch, and rock along the trial that weaves its way up the creek bed to the lower falls. Most of the marks are just tags left by punks who feel the need to mark their territory like the animals that they are. Some of it, however, is more philosophical like the graffiti ironically urging others on the trail to “be one with nature.” The canyon walls beneath the pool at the first falls too are plastered with unsightly graffiti while beer bottles and other trash litter the canyon bottom. On the day I visited, I rounded a bend in the trail to come face-to-face with a “gentleman” whose shorts were around his ankles as he dropped a dookie trailside with absolutely no shame or regret.

But it is possible to look past the spray paint and the trash and the dookies and the words of the philosopher kings. And you should. Because despite all of it, this is still damn compelling and wild country that is worth the visit. There are very few local places that I can think of that rival it. Tar Creek before the Forest Service closed it off probably qualifies. Matilija Falls if you can get there without raising the ire of the cranky landowner over whose property the path supposedly crosses. Perhaps a few spots along the Sespe. Maybe the Fishbowls in a good water year before they silted up. But the list is short and the chance of reaching your desired destination can be dubious. So I’ll go to Santa Paula Canyon again despite the negatives. I’ll go to see the canyon. I’ll go to experience the blessed water while it’s still around. I’ll go to sit beneath the falls and feel the cool spray. I’ll go on an uncrowded day when the skies are threatening or the temperatures are cool to listen to the silence ricochet off of the walls of the gorge. And I’ll turn a blind eye and ear to the rest.

Canyon Art

Lower Falls

Lower Falls and Pool

Welcome to the Jungle

2015 Year in Review

Reflecting back on 2015, it seems I spent a bit more time than in previous years wandering around in my own backyard than traipsing off to the San Gabriels or the Sierra. I still got a couple of those trips in, but my agenda was more heavily tilted toward the Los Padres, the Santa Monicas, and the Santa Susanas. That wasn't necessarily a conscience thing. As Robbie Robertson said, "the wind just kind of pushed me this way." So I went. And took a couple of pics along the way. Here are some of them. Hope you like.

Have an adventurous 2016 everyone. See you on the trail

I have a friend who is fond of saying that I'm so cautious I probably wear multiple condoms while having sex. In a nod to that friend, I give you the following obligatory copyright disclaimer: This slide show is solely for the private enjoyment of my friends and me. When you watch, you are stopping by my virtual living room to see my pictures while simultaneously listening to music written by Oasis which is playing in the background on my virtual stereo system (does referencing a "stereo system" date me?). I gain no monetary benefit from this (I get no ad revenue from this blog) and want none. I do not possess, and claim no right, title, or interest in the music or lyrics that accompany this slide show. Those rights are the exclusive intellectual property of the Beatles of my generation, the band Oasis, and/or its members and/or their label and/or ASCAP. 

Divide Peak: To Infinity and Beyond

Mouth of North Fork Matilija Canyon 

A recent trip report by David R reminded me that it had been years since I'd been up beautiful Murietta Canyon just north of Ojai. I used to ride this canyon on a fairly regular basis when I lived in Ventura, but after moving further east in 1998, I hadn't been back and it was bumming me out. So on Sunday morning, I  made a return visit to my old stomping grounds to get reacquainted with this magical place.

My objective for the day was Divide Peak, a 4,707' bump along the Santa Ynez Mountains that separates the Ojai Valley from the coast and affords incredible views of the Santa Barbara Channel and the Channel Islands. From road's end in Matilija Canyon, the route is about a 4.5 mile road walk up scenic Murietta Canyon, a steep 1.5 mile scramble up the Monte Arido Trail, and then a 0.8 mile amble along Divide Peak Road to the summit. You can avoid some of the road walk (and shave a bit of mileage) in lower Murietta Canyon by taking a foot-path that leads to Murietta Trail Camp and then rejoins the main fire road at 34.498565, -119.402450. 

North Fork Matilija Canyon

View Down Matilija Canyon from Murietta Road

Scenic Murietta Canyon

The day was unusually warm for late November and the road felt steeper than it should have felt. I wore a halo of flies as I made my way up Murietta Canyon, grateful that I had grabbed my bug net at the last moment before leaving the house. But the canyon was quiet, colorful, and completely vacant. I had the run of the place.

The walk up Murietta Canyon is pretty straightforward. Get on the road and walk uphill. The road up the canyon climbs gently at first but steepens further up as you approach the saddle. There, you have options. You can tack right and continue north up to Old Man Mountain and beyond on the Monte Arido Fire Road. You can continue west on the fire road which descends into Juncal Canyon and into the upper Santa Ynez River drainage. Or you can turn south and ascend 1,200 feet on the Monte Arido Trail to the Divide Peak Fire Road and the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains.

Jameson Reservoir from the Monte Arido Trail

Juncal Canyon from Upper Monte Arido Trail

Murietta Trail from Upper Monte Arido Trail

Old Man Mountain and Monte Arido

The path for this latter option is not immediately obvious, but it is not difficult to find. Simply scale the southern embankment just beyond where the Monte Arido Fire Road joins the saddle and the way forward will come into focus. Initially, the trail follows what appears to be an abandoned road bed and the going is easy. Eventually, however, that road bed peters out at which stage the trail climbs steeply and directly up the spine of the ridge. Not being in prime adventuring condition, I struggled here, but the expanding views into Juncal and Murietta Canyons distracted me and pushed me forward. I took a breather at flat spot along the ridgeline straddling the two canyons that would make a very fine spot to spend the night.

After a final stiff climb, the Monte Arido Trail intersects the Divide Peak Fire Road. You'll know you're done with the climb when you arrive at a large sandstone boulder with a cairn atop it. To get to Divide Peak, turn right and follow the sandy and relatively flat road for approximately 0.8 miles. The summit can be attained by climbing steeply up very loose rogue motorcycle trails that scar Divide's north-eastern flank. The easier and less frustrating alternative, however, is to wrap around Divide's northern side on the fire road and then come back at the summit from the west.

As far as summits go, Divide's is somewhat underwhelming. It's basically broad, flat, and exposed humpback. But the views of the Santa Barbara Channel and the Oxnard Plain are unmatched. On the day I was there, I could clearly see Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa Islands. I could also plainly see Santa Catalina Island floating in the Pacific almost 100 miles away.   

The trail register is located in a water-bottle canister tucked into a rock-pile just northeast of Divide's high-point. I could not located a benchmark. I sat on the rock pile for a spell enjoying a burrito and the sound of the breeze. 

Back at the Monte Arido Trail junction, I contemplated attacking the Santa Ynez Mountains high point which sits at 4,864' and approximately 3/4 mile east of the junction. But that is all I did. I knew I didn't have enough gas in the tank or water in my bottles so I began the long walk back and committed to return to explore this area on another day.   

Divide Peak Summit Canister. Big Ass Ham.

View South from Divide Peak

Oil Platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel

Anacapa Island from Divide Peak

To Infinity and Beyond

Lake Casitas from Divide Peak. This Drought is Real Yo.