A Day at the Spa: Matilija Canyon

Summertime, and the living's easy...

as long as you stay at the beach.

It's official, the year to date has been California's hottest on record, and this summer has been scalding, simmering, and scorching for those moving around the backcountry. I know I've gotten nuked pretty much every time I've been out since early June. Those that follow this page may have noted a distinct drop in activity this July. I do apologize, but frankly I'm a little tired of getting boiled every time I go out.

To this end I remembered that there is this place I used to visit too frequently, a place with tall waterfalls and deep pools, an eden of sorts. I needed the sound of running water, the splash of small falls, and a good dunking in cool, clear fresh water. Jack Elliott joined up for an easy day of R&R up Matilija way.

Matilija is proving to be surprisingly drought resistant. We hit all the spots. We charged to the falls at the top of the canyon and took our time coming out, dunking liberally in the cool creek. We both pondered this notion that it had been too long since we'd heard water, and that it seemed we were both out beating ourselves to a pulp so frequently that this gentle day of creekside refreshment seemed a gift from the creator, like a day at the spa. Since I'm not inclined to get all rhapsodic about the natural wonder that is Matilija, I'll let my photos do the talking. 

Matilija Mystery Cave Found?

A couple months ago Josh Weir came to me with a rumor of a lost and forgotten cave somewhere upstream of the West Falls of Matilija. We had an interesting day exploring almost the entire length of that canyon, and though we found something quite interesting, we didn't find anything resembling a cave [Link to TR]. With some reluctance I admitted that we'd probably been sandbagged with a mythical quest. But then again...?

I was contacted recently by a fellow named Jake, formerly of Ojai but now residing in the LA area (poor sap). He shared with me a description of this "cave" and gave me a location. He'd been running up and down Matilija all the summers of his youth. He described to me his recollection of finding this site, which included a memory of the "cave" smelling of death and surrounded by bear scat, which explains in a completely reasonable sense why he never ventured inside. He said the place had a "bad vibe", a feeling I can totally relate to having experienced similar feelings about similar places on rare occasions.

Jake's description led me to a very large tan boulder about 0.15 miles above the West Falls. I was underwhelmed and can only guess that this small space under the boulder probably felt intimidatingly deep and dark to a boy with an overactive imagination and leery of what might be lurking in the shadows. I have memories of the same type, when recollections of scary things or places have become exaggerated with the passage of time only to be rediscovered as an adult to be either not so scary or completely benign. Also, I've been a traveller of the Matilija drainage long enough to appreciate the unending flow of changes within the canyon, some slow, some dramatic. This in mind, I can speculate that this hollow under the massive boulder might once have been more cavernous and it's entrance smaller, but it's proximity to the creek would have ensured that the space had filled in with gravel and silt as a result of high water events, rendering the space beneath the boulder more airy and smaller in size. 

Beneath the boulder was a space about 12 feet deep, 6 feet in width at it's widest, and perhaps 4-5 feet in height. On the flat gravel floor was a tidy little fire ring and an adjacent stone bench, neither of which had seen use in recent history. So that's it. And that's all there is to this mysterious cave. Or, Not-A-Cave.

As a reward for not finding a cave I got to spend the rest of the day dipping in the perfect waters of Matilija Creek. I'm telling you it was a beeyooteefull day. Not another soul in the entire canyon. Had the whole park to myself. This is exactly the time to head up there. The creek is running nicely, several of the pools got a good washing out by our one winter rainstorm, the flowers are blooming, it don't get much better.

Thanks Jake, for getting in touch, and for helping me put this one to bed. Here's some pictures to make you homesick.

Sadly, the Emerald Pool is no more, having been filled in by several rock slides. Used to be that one could swim laps in this one.

West Falls

Cara Blanca (attempted) 01/09/14

There is a big difference between quitting and being a quitter. It's about being able to say to yourself, with 100% honesty, that you gave it your best shot. Attempting something and failing is a part of life, and if you don't occasionally fail to meet your own goals, then you haven't set the bar high enough. I didn't get my summit this time out. That doesn't mean I didn't try my damnedest, nor does it mean that I've conceded defeat. It just means that my route didn't work out. But Cara Blanca and I aren't done with each other just yet.

Green=Up/Red=Down

After blazing through the standard Matilija trail I started up West Falls Canyon and the day really got underway. This was my second time up there in recent days, and though my first trip up this remote canyon had been interesting and entertaining, I had not neglected to closely scrutinize the south face of Cara Blanca while there. This 60 degree pyramid of gleaming white sandstone had always captured my attention and was a peak I felt deserved to be climbed. At home I studied my own photos, topo maps, and wildly out of date satellite imagery with an eye toward ascending her. I concluded that there might be a way to climb the peak from it's southeast flank. 

West Falls Canyon

The ravine on the eastern side of the south face. Ugly.

Bring on the brush. About a half mile up West Falls Canyon I departed the creek and started up a loose, steep, and alarmingly brushy slope. Progress was difficult pretty much from the get-go. Loose rock skittered away beneath me, forcing me to cling to the overhead brush. In the thicker brush I basically hand-over-handed myself upward from one bush to the next. At times I had to tunnel under the brush, or back-track when I hit a wall so tangled and interwoven that passage was essentially impossible. This stuff was as bad as any I had ever encountered. I found some daylight in a rocky patch of the slope and planned my next push, which would bring me into the primary ravine on the eastern side of the peak and from there the slope, while steeper, looked a bit less of a mess. 

It took me the next half hour to traverse into and out of that ravine, a distance of only about 500 feet. It was just brutal. I took a thorn to the ear and a gnarly scratch to my right eyelid. I got tangled up in brush, took a spill and ended up in yucca which penetrated my leather gloves and the US Army BDU pants I was wearing. My shirt was torn, and the exposed skin of my wrists between the shirt sleeves and my gloves was getting pretty shredded. On the west side of the ravine I took a break to dig out the yucca thorns. That done, I took a good long look up the peak from where I was and wasn't all that encouraged by the view. I had a loose scree slide, talus, and yucca in the immediate future but above that I could see only brush.

I found a rib of highly untrustworthy sandstone and ascended that for about 150 feet before I had another band of brush to deal with. Ever since clearing the ravine the grade had been a consistent 50 degrees and the going had gotten increasingly tough. I cleared the brush again and encountered a long stretch of Class IV sandstone which was so decayed as to have the solidity of a dirt clod. This was disappointing. I'd hoped to have better stone higher up but it wasn't meant to be. I exited the slabs to the right and got back into the totally horrendous brush. I managed to ascend another 200 feet by utilizing brush as hand and footholds on the steep slope, not the most reliable climbing medium. To make things even harder, I had to bludgeon my way higher through that brush. Before long I was really getting exhausted. By this time I was maybe a 100 feet below being even with the top of the white face of Cara Blanca. This wasn't working.

The top of the white slabs of the south face of Cara Blanca behind the yucca, and where I quit.

I used my heels to kick out a shelf of dirt that I could sit down on and rest for a bit while I took stock of where I was and what I was going to do. I finally conceded that the brush between me and the summit was too much for me. I recall thinking that if the peak was going to get ascended from this direction it would take a harder man than me. I made peace with the peak (for now) and set out to find a better way down than the one I ascended. This would prove impossible, and my descent route was, in fact, even more of a mess than the way up.

Monte Arrido Peak and Old Man Mountain from the steeps of Cara Blanca.

A look down the Matilija watershed. Divide Peak and Peak 4864 center right. SubPeak 2 in the immediate Left foreground.

Before descending I traversed east across the south side of the peak, passing under rotten slabs and ascending again until I was under what I've labeled "SubPeak 1", which is a point made of the same sandstone that decorates the pyramid of the South Face. The eastern edge of SubPeak 1 terminated in a sheer drop onto the sixty degree gullies of the east face of the peak and offered a view into the north branch of Matilija Creek. I descended this sheer edge until I'd reached the nob of SubPeak 2. From here I dropped into what is possibly the worst brush I've ever encountered, which is saying something. It was bad. On the way down that hellish slope I tried to think of various descriptors, cuss words, and adjectives I could link together to create an image for you. All of them fell short of the magnitude of the seething hell this descent was. Eventually I broke through the brush and crashed into the creek below. Pull all the sticks out of me and insert a fork instead. I'd had enough for one day. It was a good fight. You just gotta love the LPNF.

The steep slab face of SubPeak 1.

The South Face of Cara Blanca from the east.

Two weeks later I got the summit (Trip Report).

Exploration of West Falls Canyon, Matilija 12/29/13

There's a rumor out there, one that indicates that there are some interesting caves on the West Falls Canyon portion of the greater Matilija drainage. I had never heard anything regarding these caves and was immediately intrigued when I was approached by a guy named Josh Weir with some odd and anecdotal information he'd been able to compile. This information was second or third hand and came from a source which claims to have visited these caves around two decades ago. The clues given to Josh were highly esoteric, for instance, "Look high, look low."(that's a real gem), and "Look for a tree bent at an angle." and "Locate a forked tree, turn around and find markings on other trees.". Okaaaay. Seems we had a real Scooby Doo mystery on our hands. 

The day started with a run up Matilija to the West Falls. After a brief break we scrambled up the right side of said falls and stepped into untrammeled wilderness. Within five minutes of travel we had passed the furthest I'd ever been in this particular drainage. Josh had been about a mile above the falls but no further. I took point and had a good time figuring out the cleanest way to progress upstream. Water levels were low, which helped considerably. Tree limbs and deadfalls were a nearly constant issue but the brushier portions of the creek were easily dealt with. I had expected the going to be much worse based on my previous experience in Old Man Canyon.

We made steady progress upstream, often passing around pleasant pools and small waterfalls. Bear sign was literally everywhere and often we found ourselves following animal track over shale slides and through brush thickets. About 1.5 miles into this upper drainage we encountered an 80ft waterfall which is marked on Conant's map of the Matilija Wilderness. At this site water streams gently in a broad fan down a steep sandstone face, dripping into a shallow pool ringed with boulders. We ascended the right side of the falls using ledges which ceded to a chunky crack of poor quality stone. Climbing the falls required a few moves of easy Fifth Class and some confidence in one's abilities. Josh handled it fine.

The upper falls of West Falls Canyon, Matilija (and below).

By this time we were passing under the white face of Cara Blanca, that gleaming pyramid of stone which one can see from many portions of the Matilija Trail. We had intermittent views of Cara Blanca's face, though being right under it, we couldn't see the actual summit. We continued ascending the drainage, which alternated between areas of open scrub and narrow, arbored gorge. Eventually we saw a couple pines that might fit the "bent" description and I allowed myself to think that maybe, just maybe there was something to this whole "caves" thing and that we were in the neighborhood. We saw no caves or anything that might conceivably be described as a cave in this vicinity. Continuing onward I began "looking high, looking low". Some time later we passed the point where the extinct Bald Hills Trail crossed the creek heading northwest. There was no sign of this trail's existence.

Cara Blanca from below and west.

Some time later we ascended a slabby waterfall of white sandstone, water channeled and polished. At the base of this dry falls there were numerous piles of bear scat and we found multiple bed-down sites. I led us upstream for a while without seeing anything that resembled caves, but then we encountered the partial wreckage of an old airplane. This was indeed interesting and it also afforded an ideal place to conclude our upstream search. By this time I was pretty certain that these caves were a myth and that we'd been sandbagged. 

Tangled in new growth trees a couple meters above the creek were the twisted remains of an old airplane fuselage. Portions of the plane had clearly been burned, whether this occurred as a result of the crash or in the last fire to sweep the area (1980) was impossible to determine. Josh pointed out that some of the older trees in the immediate area showed signs of fire damage and I noted that there seemed to be more undergrowth the further one got from the wreckage. Interestingly, much of the plane was missing. There were no wings or landing gear present, which led me to speculate that those parts had either burned completely, been washed downstream, or had been deposited on the steep and inaccessible hillside above the wreckage. This site can be found about 3.3 miles upstream of the West Falls.

After a decent break we decided to turn it around and began descending back the way we came. For quite a ways in our return trip I remained concerned with locating the caves we had been trying to find. We got back to the lonely, bent pine tree and I took some pains to climb well into a branch gully to, to no avail. I will allow that if there had been some kind of cave or caves in the portion of drainage that we explored, those caves may have been destroyed or rearranged by high water events, but overall I was left with impression that the caves were mythical. I won't go as far as to say that they never existed, but I will say that there aren't any caves in this canyon today, at least not in the 3.29 miles of drainage that we explored.

Cara Blanca from below and west.

Josh Weir descending the upper falls of West Falls Canyon.

As with most days in the wilderness, for me this day was primarily about exploring and experiencing the backcountry and seeing what I might find. No caves, no problem. I'd always wanted a better view of Cara Blanca and I was able to satisfy that yen. And finding the wreckage of an airplane was surprising to say the least (Craig Carey is going to look into it). Josh was good company and carried his weight well despite a recent ankle injury. It was an all around excellent little day of adventure.

Cara Blanca from below and east.