07-01-2012 Knapp's Castle

I got this great new book a few weeks ago. It’s called Hiking and Backpacking Santa Barbara and Ventura.  It’s by our good friend Craig Carey. The book is a really great resource for folks who want to explore this area. It has heaps of detailed maps. There’s historical notes and loads of information. Clear, precise directions to trailheads. It’s really well organized. I think anybody interested in the southern Los Padres should get themselves a copy.

 Approaching from the road

One of the first trips described in the book (the fifth actually) is short little walk out to Knapp’s Castle. This is a very simple, but lovely stroll right off East Camino Cielo Road that gives you a gorgeous view of Lake Cachuma, and the Santa Ynez River as it snakes its way down towards the Gibraltar Reservoir. But the real treat is visiting the ruins of a once magnificent mansion built by George Knapp in the early 20^th century. If you want a good historical run down of Knapp and his castle check out Jack’s blog.

 Lake Cachuma in the background

Someone has left chairs so you can relax and watch the sunset.

It’s not just the ruins of an old mansion up there. We saw plenty of evidence that people are working up there too. Wood planks are piled up, construction equipment is parked and waiting for work to do. A broken down Jeep rests in some bushes. There is a sign telling visitors that they are being watched.  Good luck to the current owners on trying to navigate through the Santa Barbara building code bureaucracy.

 The hills have eyes!

We wandered around the sight for awhile. Checked out the chimneys, and what’s left of a amphitheatre. I think the best time to visit the castle is right around sunset. If we had wanted to, we could have hiked the Snyder Trail; it shares the same trailhead as Knapp's. We decided to head back down the pass and back home instead.  

02-05-2012 Munson Creek

Megan wanted to go out on a hike instead of watching the Superbowl this week. I supported that plan 100%. I went to the Rugby World Cup Finals a few months ago, I don’t need to see the Superbowl. The only requirement she had was that we had to drive up the 33. I decided that Munson Creek might be fun to explore. (Update: After an exhaustive re-review of the maps, I have concluded that we were actually in the un-named creek between Munson Creek and Burro Creek. Sorry for the confusion.)

Munson Creek lies between Potrero John Creek and Chorro Grande Canyon. We found a spot on the side of the road to park. There was a well defined trail right at the edge of the road. We followed that trail a few hundred yards to a flat area. Enormous sandstone formations emerge from the chaparral in typical Los Padres form; pocked, craggy, slightly intimidating, and intriguingly mysterious. Before you get to rock formations you will notice that the ground is covered in spent shell casings and blasted to shit targets. Shattered glass was ubiquitous. We found three SCUBA tanks that someone had hauled up there to shoot. Stuffed toy animals were found mercilessly executed. I guess since people can't shoot at Cherry Creek Rd (just up the 33 a little bit) anymore they probably just come down to Munson to shoot their old computers. The creek bed was dry for the most part. There were a few little pools of water here and there, but no flow to speak of. When there is water flowing, Munson Creek drains directly into the Sespe. It drives me nuts how inconsiderate these jerks are. I hardly ever see anybody else in the forest, yet there’s trash almost everywhere I go.

Okay, enough trash talk. We continued to follow the trail as it wound its way north towards Pine Mountain. We saw some cool boulders.

Bus sized boulder that cracked in two.

This rock was happy to see me.

Big mushroom boulder.

We started finding all kinds of fossil imbedded rocks in the creek bed. Little clam and snail shells were just sitting there, as they have for the past few million years.

The trail lead us to a rock wall with two waterfalls, one at each end. The pool that the bigger falls spills into is nice and deep, at least six feet. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way past the rock wall. I think you could probably scramble up the hill on the west side of the creek, but I didn’t try. We wandered around a bit looking for other cool stuff.

Then we headed back toward the car. We stopped and ate some snacks in a drainage tunnel that goes under the 33. Then we got in the car drove up to the Chorro Grande trailhead, looked around a bit, then drove back down to Ventura.

Some Secret Places

The motto here at VCC is, “Searching for Lost Secrets.” In the past few months I’ve found a few of those secrets. I’m willing to share some pictures of these places, but I won’t be giving out any clues to their specific locations. It only takes a few moments for some greedy idiot to destroy something that has been around for centuries.

Some chipped paintings I've seen.

A few months ago Frank and I drove up to Santa Barbara to hunt down a couple of caves I had read about named Condor Cave and Pool Rock. They both are in Campbell Grants’ book The Rock Paintings of the Chumash  as plates SB- 17 and SB-11 respectively. The only information I had about these sites was the trailhead to start at, a few pictures of the rock formations the caves were in, and a cryptic clue I had found on the internet.

We got lucky and were able to figure out the clues that led us to the first site, Condor Cave. This cave has some very nice, very large paintings. There is also a hole in the cave wall that may or may not be Chumash made. I certainly don’t have the expertise to tell.

A "Condor" painted over a bear paw petroglyph

Hole in the cave wall and a couple of bedrock mortars

High off that victory we wanted to find Pool Rock. I knew it was relatively close by, but I had no idea what direction to start looking. We looked at the pictures I had brought and inspected them closely. Some of the rocks in the background of the picture looked a lot like some the rocks we could see from where we stood. Based on that we decided on a direction and headed out. By this time the sun was really blasting us. We were able to persevere, and eventually we saw Pool Rock in the distance.

This is a huge rock formation with a couple of small caves around the base. This site has paintings as well as petroglyphs.  All around the entrance to the main cave are small circular recesses. They look like miniature mortar holes.

A few months went by before we went out looking for more lost secrets. This time we went looking in the Ventura backcountry. The next cave we found had just a few simple paintings in it. None the less it was a very satisfying find. 

 This circle is about four or five inches in diameter

The last cave I’ll tell you about took me a long time to find. I’ve been out searching for it many times before with no luck. This time I was really motivated to put some miles under my feet and find this sucker. I covered a lot of ground this day hiking up one drainage then another. Then when I had less than five minutes to go before my self-imposed turn around time I saw a Forest Service sign-in post that meant rock art was near. I then ignored the turn around mandate and I proceeded to take some pictures and enjoy the satisfaction of finally finding this long hidden secret.

 I'm not sure if this Chumash painting or not

 This sure is

I've been trying to figure out where these sites were for a few years now. It's really nice to have been able to see these mysterious enigmas.With some more luck I'll be able to show you some more of these in the future.

10-25-2011, Blue Canyon, Waitakeri Ranges, New Zealand

 Sky Tower

One of my top priorities for this trip was to bag some New Zealand canyons. I've only experienced Los Padres canyons prior to this trip. I found a guide company called CanyoNZ that offered a couple local canyon trips. I thought I'd start with their easier canyon first. My brother decided to join me as well. We met up with our guides Tom and Elise at the base of Sky Tower. We also met out other trip companions. There were some Irish guys, some South Africans guys, a French dude, and a South African couple. I think they were all here to attend the Rugby World Cup. 

After introductions we all piled in to some vans and the guides drove us to a farm house in the Waitakeri region. We were then outfitted with some wet suits, helmets, and harnesses. I had brought my own canyoneering boots, but they had shoes for everyone else to use. Another short drive and we were at the trailhead to Blue Canyon. We tramped up for about twenty minutes to the top of the canyon. It's a beautiful, rain forest environment. There's lot's of ferns and green plants. I've trained myself to be always be on the look out for poison oak, but there's no need for that here. We put on all our equipment and then got a short lesson on abseiling from the guides. Then it was time to start down the canyon. It began with a few jumps into the cold water. The guides encouraged us to have fun, and we did.

There are many jumps

Next was a waterslide that we went down backwards. Then maybe some more jumps? I can't remember the exact order of things. There were a lot features to this canyon. At some point we had to make a mildly high abseil. I went down first, well one of the guides went down first, but I was the first client down. I sat on a rock in the middle of a pool at the base of the waterfall, and watched everyone else come down. I was kicking my feet in the water when I noticed a four foot long eel swimming a few feet away. I chased him around a bit, but couldn't catch him. Maybe another slide or two then I think we took a short break for lunch and some hot tea. We were all getting along well and enjoying the experience.

Backwards waterslide

While we finished our sandwiches one of the guides rigged up the next abseil. I don't know why they use the word "abseil" here instead of "rappel". I forgot to ask. It's probably because it's a French word. Kiwis hate French stuff. I did ask what type of rock the canyon was cut from. Tom told me it was a basalt conglomerate. It's a super tough product of volcanic activity millions of years ago.

There were a few abseils

And more jumps

Another abseil, some more jumps and slides then one last abseil and we were done with the canyon. We took a short walk back to the vans. From there we returned to the farmhouse to get changed. Then we were off back to Auckland.

This was fun canyon. Nothing too scary. The guides were really professional and friendly. They kept everything safe, but still made it a really enjoyable, memorable experience.  

10-23-2011 Rugby World Cup Finals, Auckland, New Zealand

The City of Sails
 

 I know this doesn't really have any connection to hiking, but this is my blog, so I can talk about whatever I want to, so I'm going to talk about rugby. I'm in New Zealand to visit family and to attend the Rugby World Cup championship game. The night I flew out of LAX to Auckland the quarterfinal test between New Zealand's All Blacks and the Australia's Wallabies was to be played. My flight was continuing on to Melbourne after I got in New Zealand, so there were a lot of Aussies flying back home in the plane. There was a lot of tension in the planes dry, filtered air. When the stewardess announced that, "The host nation will be in the finals" half the cabin started applauding (me included) and the other half looked down in their laps sadly. I had to smile, the All Blacks would be facing their much despised rival, France. Our Kiwi stewardess donned All Blacks scarves for the rest of the flight. The drive through Auckland to my parents house was lined with black banners hanging from windows, supporting the national team.

The week leading up to the final test was like nothing I've seen before. This whole country is absolutely obsessed with the All Blacks. I already knew this. I've been an All Blacks supporter myself since my family moved to New Zealand in late '90's. I wanted to learn more about Kiwi culture and rugby is the thing that unites all Kiwis. So now that the All Blacks were in the RWC Championship game the country has gone completely bonkers. I'm not sure if any thing newsworthy happened in the world this week because the only thing on the news here has been speculation of how much New Zealand is going beat the French by. But on television they will say "rival team" because they don't actually want to use the word "France". 

 For the ladies, giant billboards of Dan Carter in his underwear are all over the city

Most Kiwi's I talked to predicted lopsided scores like New Zealand 45 France 9. My gut told me that the French would come to play, and that the score would be close. But I was definitely picking New Zealand to win. I watched Australia beat Wales in the third place test on the television a few nights before the big game. I found out the most hated person in New Zealand is not a Frenchy, but a Kiwi, Quade Cooper. He plays for the despised Australian team. When he went down with a devastating knee injury in the test against Wales, Kiwis cheered. It was a bit sanguinary for me, but it shows how crazy the locals are for this game.

 Outside Eden Park


Finally the day of the Championship arrived. My companion for the game was my 11 year old nephew. He got decked out in all black, and and his mum painted his face. She dropped us off in Takapuna where we caught a bus to the stadium, Eden Park. We got there before the gates opened, so we had time to walk around outside the stadium and take in the atmosphere. New Zealanders are fairly civilized bunch. There was excitement in the air. Anyone wearing blue was getting an earful of smack talk by drunk Kiwis, which I thought was great. We went inside when the gates opened and watched the stadium fill up. I saw a few beer drinking challenges between French and New Zealand fans, followed by drunk singing from both.

The sun went down and it was time for the opening ceremony. There was a naked Maori (I hear it pronounced: Mah-ree, with a little roll on the r) blowing on a big horn of some sort. Then the two sides sang there national anthems. 

Les Bleus supporters singing their national anthem...

... And Kiwis singing theirs

Then it was time for the All Blacks to do the Haka. Normally the protocol is for the opposing team to stand silently and watch as the All Blacks do their war dance. But in a show of confidence the French walked up on the All Blacks as they began to do the Haka. The Kiwis fans hated this and started booing. I thought it was a nice show of bravado. It said that the French were not intimidated this night.

France steps up to the Haka

Then it was time to start the test. From the opening kickoff it was a battle. The high score the New Zealand fans had wanted didn't materialize. At half time a lot of Kiwi's were nervous wrecks. And the French were sensing another upset was in the works. The second half was much like the first, a low scoring, back and forth war of attrition. The last five minutes of the game were just so tense. But then the referee blew his whistle and the stadium went erupted in joy. People started singing and dancing. I was hugged many times by total strangers. This went on and on while the grounds crew set up for the closing ceremony. After the medals were handed out the French team did a lap to thank their fans and they got a well deserved round of applause from the Kiwi crowd too. Then the All Blacks did their lap, and closed the evening by doing the Haka one more time.

After that the crowds swamped Auckland, and celebrated for the rest of the night. The next day there was a big parade in downtown Auckland for the All Blacks.

A little people marching band in the parade for the Champions

Queen Street after the parade

I had a blast this whole week of the finals. It's been an experience I'll never forget. This is a great country populated by really nice, honest, slightly crazy people. Stay tuned, there's actual hiking and canyoning content to follow soon.