First, the peak-bagging. The plan was to drive up to Cuyama Peak and then to hike Lizard Head. The pavement in Santa Barbara canyon is decent-enough. The unpaved road in SB canyon and Dry canyon is mostly good, but there're a number of sections that require a high-clearance 4x4. Which we had. Eventually we were standing on Cuyama Peak. There's a lookout tower here. Rather the TOWER is still here; the house structure that sat on top now forms a rubble pile on the ground. It was cold and wet, so no photos.
There were rain clouds everywhere, with the lower edge at ~ 5000ft. Below that level it was dry-ish, but above it there was light rain, and low visibility. The whole area is full of interesting geology. Lots of uplift and lots of sandstone that erodes easily, exposing the layers. We climbed up a system of ridges from Tinta creek towards Lizard Head. The ridge tops have good use trails on them, and at least some of them used to be firebreaks at some point:
Most of the hiking was in the rainy no-visibility zone, but as we approached Lizard Head, we dropped just enough to be able to see stuff. Lizard Head itself is a pointy tip of a rocky uplift layer.
Cool! More exposed uplift further down the ridge:
Clearly, the peak itself is a tilted slab of sandstone. The uppermost layer was reddish, but this is being unevenly eroded, exposing the tan-colored sandstone beneath:
Intermittent misty rain, means intermittent but glorious rainbows:
This guy was visible for maybe 10 seconds. I just happened to be already photographing stuff at the time. Lucky! Other people were also photographing stuff:
More uplift on the return:
We hiked down to the car. It was getting dark and drizzly when we got to my potential camp site. I wasn't smart-enough to look up the weather forecast for the following day back when that was an option. It looked dry-enough. I took the glass-half-full view that tomorrow would be better, so my friends left, and I set up camp. This was the right call: light rain came and went through the night and the next day, but it was never worse than "light rain". In the morning I broke camp
and set off for the ~ 5 miles of dirt road. It wasn't the most fun riding I've ever done, but good-enough.
Just before I hit pavement at Santa Barbara Canyon ranch I passed this wall:
Good climbing? The rock is much more red-looking than this photo suggests. I scrambled up. Looks like a waterfall comes off it during wet times:
It turns out the wall is made of loose, conglomerate in places. So no climbing.
But this is apparently not a problem for the hawks (or owls; or eagles; or ...) that nest in the holes up above
You can actually see the twigs poking out of two of the holes. These birds like to eat rodents and then to regurgitate the fur and bones as pellets. The base of this cliff is COVERED in pellets.
There're bones EVERYWHERE:
ALL the white stuff is rodent bones. Didn't see any birds or rodents themselves. Eventually I left, rejoined pavement, and crossed the mighty Cuyama River
The climb up Hwy 33 is initially straight with a light grade. Eventually it steepens and climbs more. I reentered the clouds, and once again it started raining on me.
As a reward for my efforts I found $2!
These were soaked, so I put them in a separate pocked from the rest of my (dry) stuff. And as a result, they flew away somewhere an hour later. Oh well. I summitted
and descended down the other side. The ridge I crossed blocked the clouds, so the Sespe river drainage was sunny and dry
More cool geology here. And there was even a wall solid enough for people to climb it. Somebody just finished this crack when I rode by
The descent is spectacular
That's the ocean and Santa Cruz island on the horizon. In the Ventura river drainage some effects of the Thomas fire were visible, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Anyway. This whole area is super cool.
