Quick overnight wander in the Figueroa Mountain area

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

I’ve been enjoying doing an almost weekly overnight trip in the Los Padres National Forest. I live pretty close to the Los Padres where there are lots of trails. It is not hard to get out onto a trail with almost no people and find a stealth camp.

I am still working during the virus, but from home. So my life has become just sitting on my couch day and night. Getting away for the weekend is nice. The hikes I have been doing are not long, they’re not far from civilization, I am not putting anyone at risk. Having been hit by a car recently waiting for a traffic light I know it’s not possible to eliminate risk entirely. A short hike is not as much risk as the daily miles I do walking around my neighborhood.

The trip I did was on the Ranger Peak trail, which starts at a shooting place called the Glass Factory on Sunset Valley Road. I hiked up to Ranger Peak, which is very close to Figueroa Mountain Road. I crossed the road and took a closed dirt road called East Pinery Road down toward the Davy Brown trail thinking I might go to Willow Springs. The trail down to Davy Brown was very overgrown, so I abandoned that idea and went down the Whiterock trail instead.

The Whiterock trail passed an old prospect and dropped down into a small valley. I camped alone in a meadow. Another mile or two and I was out on Sunset Valley road where I did a 4 mile or so road walk back to my car.

It was extremely pretty.

One of the reasons I went on this trip, besides getting away from my couch, was to camp out in bad weather. I’ve been sort of enjoying backpacking in less than optimal weather. It was cold, wet and drippy but it did not rain. Here are some bush lupine.

This is the meadow where I camped. I guess the more appropriate term for this is a small potrero. This was the view from my campsite. For some reason as the sun went down, this heavy cloud felt gloomy and creepy. I ended up putting up a door on my tarp so I didn’t have to look out and feel creepy, so I could feel cozy instead. My campsite was lumpy and uncomfortable but otherwise it was nice.

Everything was so green. Blinding green. I did not see a lot of flowers. I don’t think this will be a good year for Figueroa Mountain flowers. A lot of people drive up to Figueroa Mountain to see the flowers, but I think all the rain will make the grasses grow up too much and crowd out the flowers. I’m sure there are some, though, and probably worth taking a look. This is the view from Sunset Valley close to where I parked my car.

I also made a video of the trip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INHYhoydW-Y

One thing about doing short weekend hikes like this is I kind of feel like a thru-hiker again in a way. The weekdays are the zero days, days of nothingness that kind of disappear in memory because all I do is sit. The weekends are the days when I’m alive and I’m out there living. If anything good comes out of this whole COVID thing it’s that I realize in a more tangible way that there is no need to save up vacation days for a big adventurous trip. Small adventurous trips done frequently kind of add up to the same thing as they accumulate in your memories.

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