The two major hiking routes up into the mysterious and remote Hurricane Deck formation in the San Rafael Wilderness start from the celebrated Nira Trailhead — for my last column we went up the Potrero Canyon Trail to Negus Meadow, and in early May I trudged up the equally demanding Lost Valley Trail to Twin Oaks Camp (elevation 2,900 feet). My friends and I carried four liters of water each for the ascent, wore heavy garb that proved helpful, and made sure to begin hiking early on a promised-to-be-hot May 8.
Departing Santa Barbara’s Westside at 5:30 a.m., we were walking quietly up Manzana Creek in the cool morning by 7:30 a.m. While we were silent, watching and listening for animals and birds, the creek gushed loudly and we observed a number of natural swimming holes around Lost Valley Camp. After just more than a mile on the Upper Manzana Creek Trail, we headed inland on the appropriately named Lost Valley Trail.
During the entire seven-hour day “outside,” we encountered no other hikers except three backpackers ensconced at shaded Twin Oaks Camp. This tiny, rustic camp is difficult to locate on the Internet (hurrah!), and it isn’t in Craig Carey’s comprehensive book or in Bryan Conant’s 2009 edition of his very useful "San Rafael Wilderness Trail Guide." However, like new additions such as Ray’s Camp and Lorna Camp, Twin Oaks Camp near Vulture Spring does appear in the updated 2015 edition of Conant’s guide — thus, getting new paper maps, and not relying on the Internet, can really pay off.
Since the Nira Trailhead has been heavily utilized during the COVID-19 lockdown, we chose something literally off the heavily beaten path of the Manzana Creek Trail.
The Lost Valley Trail has an old iron sign just above the Lost Valley Camp, which had no campers there on a Friday morning. I led my own 3-year-old son to Lost Valley Camp in the 1980s, and we saw a proud father leading his very young daughter to the same location on May 8.
Roaming about and hiking on the western flank of the sacred Hurricane Deck confers an enlarged “perspective” on world affairs and on matters troubling the soul. Back in town, there is so much happening — the Tao’s World of 10,000 Things, economic crises, COVID-19, the lockdown. Yet, when I saw the small girl proudly striding to the Manzana, I relaxed and recalled that back on the river we’re in “deep time” and must make pauses to savor what’s right in front of us.
As COVID-19 afflicts our country and the entire world, the small backpacker resembles every child. The young need to realize that in strange ways nature is fighting back against the global and thoughtless dominion of the homo sapiens species. Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N.’s Environmental Program, recently stated, “Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people,” explaining that 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife. “Our continued erosion of wild spaces has brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbor diseases that can jump to humans.”
This Lost Valley hike is a sort of parallel to the recent Potrero Canyon Trail hike described earlier. They’re about 3 miles apart, both rise high above their respective intermittent streams, and both finally achieve the apex of the wild Deck.
The Lost Valley Trail to Twin Oaks Camp and then the Deck is quite a bit longer. Once you reach the rounded apex (we didn’t try it this venture — it’s an extra 3.5 miles up) and the sketchy Hurricane Deck Trail (30W14), you can hike west on the ridge for 6 miles to intersect with the top of the Potrero Canyon Trail (near Negus Meadow). I know intrepid day-hikers who have managed this Nira-Deck-Nira marathon 19-miler, but age and caution have prevented me from tackling it! (Do not attempt this without an experienced guide; humans have died in this century on the Deck from dehydration and too much heat.)
Our Lost Valley Trail snakes awkwardly uphill and presents more terrain challenges than Potrero Canyon. There are numerous rivulets and small arroyos to step down into, the trail is badly overgrown, and you need that heavy clothing as you press through spiky Manzanita, various sages, thick chamise and plenty of poison oak in the lower reaches. You can surmise that some of this trail was once, unbelievably, a road since in places it’s a wide cut, and wagons could have passed through. Yucca spread everywhere along with the withered remnants of recently blooming wildflowers. Always ahead and above, we stare at the stirring vista of the mighty Hurricane Deck.
It turned quite warm inland on May 8, and in areas with “orange” rocks across the trail we were scouring the ground for rattlesnakes (see photo), but observed none, yet managed to see a horned toad. There are just a few remnant blue oaks shading the table at Twin Oaks, and the second site has no shade at all. Water has to be retrieved from Vulture Spring, another mile up the ascending trail. We were enthralled by the presence of strewn boulders on the concave hillsides, which some believe are the original forms of the Chumash First People.
I was very glad I had obliged my two friends to start quite early since, on our return from a rest at Twin Oaks Camp, the solar power strengthened considerably and we were quite pleased to be walking downhill. We finished the long, hot day with a plunge into the Manzana’s cool waters at a swimming hole about a quarter-mile from the Nira Trailhead. Plunging in, one recovers juvenescence, deep mind, right brain, the sublime, the eternal, whatever term suits your fancy, but the feeling is quite real. We also need to bring our children and families out here away from the screens, the cars, COVID-19, the bars and the garrulous social media stars.
4.1.1.
» Drive the 46 miles to the Nira Trailhead by taking Highway 101 to Highway 154 past the Cachuma Reservoir to the Santa Ynez River concrete bridge. Turn right there on Armour Ranch Road. After one mile, turn right again on Happy Canyon Road and drive to the end. Craig Carey, "Hiking and Backpacking Santa Barbara and Ventura" (Wilderness Press, 2012). Bryan Conant’s 2015 edition of the "San Rafael Wilderness Trail Guide" (and map) can be purchased at Chaucer’s Bookstore (telephone pickup order).
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at [email protected]. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
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Dan McCaslin: Find Inner Tranquility Along Lost Valley Trail to Twin Oaks Camp - Noozhawk
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