We showed up in Fillmore on Sat, and drove up Squaw Flat road. The internet said there would be some sort of seasonal closure, but the road was open all the way to Dough Flat. Road is decently-good dirt. There're some washouts, and some muddy spots, but pretty decent mostly. About 0.5 miles before Dough flat is a steep and potholed spot that my car had trouble with, so we parked there, and biked the last bit to Dough Flat. A storm just came through, and there was a decent waterfall right next to the road here.
Initially, the trail is a very old dirt road, so it's pretty clear with a slow climb. Surrounding rocks are cool
The entirety of this route is in the Sespe Wilderness, and it's deep-enough to get light visitation. So the trails are rough in spots, and the signage is old. Surprisingly, all trail junctions do have signs, with varying degrees of legibility.
We went left. The snowy thing is the back side of Cobblestone peak, I think:
Capped oil well?
After ~3 miles we arrived to Cow Spring. The map says this is the beginning of the "stone corral", a super cool rock formation. This thing alone would be worth the trip. The rock is composed of many alternating light and dark layers. These have been eroded over time in various ways, revealing interesting patterns. Sorta like wood grain.
All the creeks are flowing well. The stone corral creek breaks through here, and you get a nice series of cascades:
And there are rocks
The balls are maybe 3ft tall. There's a benchmark here somewhere too
Alright, there's a gentle descent here, until the geology changes, and the terrain drops steeply into a canyon
Switchbacks. Narrow, overgrown trail. Everything's passable, but it's definitely a long sleeves kind of place. You drop ~ 1000ft to a trail junction and the floor of Alder creek
Here there's officially a trail, but it comes and goes, and there's definitely an element of route finding.
This goes on for a mile or two, until another junction
We climb out on another overgrown trail, gain ~500ft, then drop about 500ft to Sespe Creek, past where Alder creek flows into it. Here was some sort of cricket/locust that was either laying eggs or being born or molting, or something
He had no interest in moving, so I took my sweet time taking photos. There's also another benchmark here somewhere
Eventually there's another junction
My understanding is that Devil's Gate is a long ways away on a very technical canyoneering route through the Sespe. Anybody know why this is even signed?
We found an artifact
ID? And then we got to cross the Sespe. Twice! It was maybe 3ft at the deepest point.
At this point you just walk up Hot Spring Canyon to the springs. We got there right before sundown, set up camp, and enjoyed the springs. The hot spring is way too hot, and flows from two clefts in the rock wall
Fortunately, there's a more traditional creek flowing in this canyon as well, and the two mix to a more reasonable temperature. Helpfully, somebody left a shovel here to make it easy to move dirt around to shape the pools and to regulate flow (and temperature!)
The place is pretty big, and really nice.
On the ground are lots of suspicious footprints and suspicious droppings
And looking up, we found the culprits
I counted 16. And one on the right is collared. I climbed one of the ridges in the morning to get a good top-down view
The hot springs area is the canyon directly beneath. The next ridge carries the Johnston ridge trail. Past that is... Hines? Topatopa? Looking North is some other big something
The next day we retraced our steps. It was supposed to take less time, but that didn't happen. This place is great! Hardly anybody here, mostly existing trail, cool rocks, lots of water (at least right now), rivers, sheep, hot springs.
Has anybody done any other routes in the area? I'm seeing several descriptions of canyoneering the Sespe below here. Supposed to be pretty gorgy and waterfally.
Wesweswes, got anything to add?
