08-14-2011 Seven Falls

Megan and I decided we wanted to get a hike in this weekend. I thought she might enjoy a hike up to Seven Falls in Santa Barbara. It's a fairly short hike with some nice scenery. The hike starts on Tunnel Road. It's a pretty popular trailhead. There were plenty of people out hiking. We took the Jususita fork in the trail. When we reached the Mission Creek junction we ignored the use-trail and went straight up the creek.

The creek is easy to navigate, and probably has less poison oak than the trail. There are small waterfalls that flow into little pools. The last waterfall is larger then the first six. It spills into a pool that could be dip worthy. However on this day there were people already in the pool, and the water looked kinda cloudy.

Looking up Mission Creek. In the upper left you'll see an antenna looking thing.

 Here's a close up of the antenna.
 

This looks just like the antenna  above. But at some point in the past this was washed down the creek. Does anyone know what these are?

There were thousands of tadpoles in the creek. Some of them were beginning to sprout their legs. We saw a Two-striped Gartersnake that was no doubt enjoying the bounty of polliwogs. There is a large salamander  living in the deep pool. It popped up to the surface for a quick second, and then disappeared back into the murky depths.

The deep pool

If you want to go further towards Mission Falls you either have to go up and over the steep sides of the canyon. Or if you don't mind getting wet you can try to wade and climb out the pothole at the top of the falls. I remember going beyond Seven Falls once many years ago when I was a teenager. As I recall there was a lot of poison oak and fallen trees. I can't imagine much has changed since my last visit.

Fossil sea shells

  So ,we had a good time hanging out in Santa Barbara. People are so much better looking in SB than Ventura. I look forward to hiking with Megan again. Maybe something more challenging next time.