A Day in the Sticks Part 2, 01/04/2011

After spending the morning traipsing around the Middle Sespe and getting booted off the Reyes Ranch on Ozuna/Lockwood Valley, I drove up to a collection of ramshackle dwellings known as Camp Scheideck. This little community was established by Eugene Scheideck in 1888. There ain't much there. A few old structures remain, including a chapel and a few old shantys. There's a small tavern and about 75 more modern dwellings. I got a Pepsi at the bar and continued up through the Reyes Creek campground to the trailhead for the north end of the Gene Marshall Piedra Blanca Trail.

The Chapel at Camp Scheideck

Reyes Creek

Done in Scheideck, I headed east through Lockwood Valley. I've been in, around, and through much of the Cuyama Badlands. That was one of the great things about having a dirt bike, being able to zip in and out of many of these micro-canyons. Much of the area is open for OHV activities. I find this area fascinating, remote, and desolate. True high chaparral. About midway between the Lockwood Valley/Hwy 33 juction and Frazier Park, a person driving east will see a great ridge of badlands dirt clods off the road to the right (I forgot to check the mile marker). Anyway, this ridge rises about 500 feet from the road, and has always intrigued me. I've always thought it would be cool to get on top of that crumbling formation. Since I wasn't doing anything else I decided to give it a good look.

Two thirds of the way up, road visible in the background.

After figuring out where the best place to start might be, I headed up an arroyo that would put me under a shoulder of the ridge. At first, I was simply scrambling up a loose, crumbling swale. As I got higher the climbing got sketchier. The swale started narrowing until it became a narrow ridge of dirt and rotten shale. I started wishing I was in crampons, I mean this crap was loose. I soon found myself face to face with a section of knifelike dirt clod that required that I hump my self up like I was astraddle a horse. One leg hung off each side of a cliff and the ridge crumbled away under my crotch with each movement. Unnerving. I cleared that obstacle and paused to consider the ridiculous spot I'd gotten myself into.

Sketchy stuff.

Covered in sweat, dirt, and caution I continued up the increasingly decomposing dirt pile. Footing got worse, I dug my hands into the soil like they were claws. Chunks of shale slid away under my feet. I clung to the occasional root, some pulled free of the shitty rock. Finally I arrived at a spot, 35 feet from the summit, that surpassed my ability to reconcile the risk with the reward. I was looking right at the top, but wasn't into dying on 5th class dirt climbing.

I got theeese close!

I ain't agoin' no further!

The swale. It got interesting in places and graduated into dangerous the higher I got.
If you enlarge the pic you'll see my truck on the road.

I had gotten as far as I was going to get. Crap. No prize, and now I had to face the prospect of reversing course. I gingerly descended the same route, and it got exciting in a couple of places, but before long I was back amongst junipers and scrub pine on terra firma. Returning to the truck I reflected on how, with an open mind, an unplanned day can take you to some strange and new places. I stopped in Frazier park for coffee and a sandwich and headed down the 5 and back home. Cool day.

Fire charred crystals I found while climbing through a
layer of strata.

Erosion.

Lockwood Valley Road, passing through the remains
of the day Fire.

For The first installment of this 2 part post, click Part 1

A Day in the Sticks Part 1, 01/04/2012

Santa Cruz Island 

My route in blue

This was one of those days that,  from the outset, I had no real plan for. I had heard a rumor of a weird spring that bubbles up from below a formation of rock somewhere in the neighborhood of Faser Cold springs near Middle Sespe. This spring is supposed to have some religious, shrine-like connection to the Chumash sun god, Kaqunupenawa. Looking for this possibly fantastical spot was about the only thing on my agenda as the sun crept over the eastern horizon. I didn't know that the day would evolve into a spontaneous adventure.

I pulled into the entrance to what used to be Beaver Camp on Hwy 33, shivered in the cold sun for a bit, and set off heading up the Sespe. For a time I was able to follow braided use trails, but these peetered out within a third of a mile. Soon I was back to what has begun to be my normal environment, busting brush. This shit got thick in a hurry, and the chokecherry was the worst (this is one of the nastiest barbed plants in our hills, going through a thicket of this stuff is like rolling around in a rose garden). I came prepared, in pants, sleeves, and work gloves.

Swallows' Nests

I struggled in the creek for about a mile before encountering the first of the rock formations that are plainly visible from the 33. I started scrambling around on the rock and before long I found a strange trail, carved out of the brush and marked in places with neon tape. This was odd. Following the trail, I was headed north between several formations when the rocks opened up to a small valley, flat, open and grassy. Again, odd. A mystery valley.

I found this on Sespe Creek. It's a perfectly mummified cat fish.
The knife is 6' long so you can figure the length.

As I explored this small valley I encountered numerous game trails and the tracks of numerous animals. I startled coveys of doves every time I rounded a patch of brush, I mean hundreds of them. Putting 2 & 2 together I figured that the trail with the neon tape was made as a secret egress to this little valley, for the purpose of bird hunting. Intermittently I would discover a shot gun shell or two which reinforced this guess. Still, I hadn't located any lost Chumash holy spring. As I wandered the edges of the valley I started heading up an unnamed watershed to the ENE I found animal tracks and rock formations but little else. Figured I'd best start heading back. I was wandering down a dry creek bed toward the Sespe when I encountered something that put me on high alert. It was a reasonably new, forest green irrigation hose, about 4" diameter. There's only one reason for a hose like this in a place nobody visits, and that reason is for the illegal cultivation of marijuana. I sunk down on my haunches and thought this through for a bit. It was obvious that no water flowed through the hose, so it was probably abandoned, and therefore unlikely to be a hazardous place to go. I followed the hose, which was well concealed in the places, for about 300 feet before it terminated in a small, brush-cleared dell under some trees. I found some trash there but figured it was too close to the 33 to require a round-the-clock camping type operation. No, I didn't find any grass.

Sespe Creek

The irrigation hose I found, concealed in places.
Obviously an abandoned grow site. 

Rock formations along the northern boundary
of the "mystery valley".

Red Tail Hawk feathers

The "mystery valley"

I left the abandoned grow site behind and returned to the truck. It was only 11:00 and I wasn't into being done for the day. Not sure what to do, I turned the truck toward Lockwood Valley. Here's when the day started taking on a life of it's own. As I drove toward Reyes Creek I stopped at the ancient, collapsing Reyes Creek Ranch house. This place hasn't been used since the 70's, and it's heyday would have been in the 40's/50's. The light fixtures date it back at least that far. Most of the building had been haphazardly constructed, one room at a time. The construction is a mix of adobe and brick. An occasional cottonwood limb helps support the ceiling. A few sticks of rickety furniture keep an old Wolf stove company. Out back is a collapsing, spider infested chicken coop. I was about reaching up to climb into the second story (the exterior stairs or ladder are long gone) when I heard a guy say "Don't do that." Ach, caught trespassing! Well, walked over to the guy with a "Howdy.". I beheld a special kind of specimen. He was tall and lean, somewhere between forty-five and sixty, broken down heels on his Tony Lama's, frayed denim everywhere, and a big bush of grey beard under a battered Stetson surrounded a weather beaten visage cracked by deep lines. He knew that I knew that I didn't have any business being on his ranch, so I just stepped up by him and started walking back to Lockwood Valley Rd. He was headed in the same direction. Seems he needed some parts for his old Ford truck and was hoofing it the 4 miles to the 33 so he could thumb a ride into Cuyama. His name was Gary and he smelled like he'd rolled in a campfire, but I offered to give him a lift out to the 33, sort atoning for my transgression. We had a good chat about the ranch and he gave me the name of the real owner of the ranch and where to find him if I wanted permission to be on the ranch. With a "Have a good one." and a rough handshake the old hand was on his way and I turned around, headed for Camp Scheideck.

The Cuyama Badlands, from the 33.

Above and below: The Reyes Ranch house

For the second installment of the day, click Part 2