But alas, we arrived at a precipitous ridge and were cliffed out:
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For my 39th birthday this year, I planned another attempt, one that would take us around the western rim of Towsley canyon instead of the eastern. I amassed an even larger expeditionary force, one which even included my OG hiking partner in crime: my father, who at 68 remains a force to be reckoned with in the backcountry.
7 of us walked up the gentle road into Towsley Canyon last Sunday, the crumbling sandstone conglomerate of the 10 million year old Towsley Formation ominously towered over us as we navigated up the creek where it cut through the Pico Anticline, a narrow passageway into the world of Towsley Canyon, a place of marine sedimentary geology foreign and unfamiliar to a group of explorers accustomed to the pulverized igneous pluton of the San Gabriel Mtns. Here rows of shallow marine bedding planes tilt at 45 degrees into the sky in jagged, angular slabs, folded and thrusted via compressive forces of the Pacific plate crashing against North America where the San Andreas fault runs east and west. Here the stench of Pliocene death rises from the water, in the form of black ooze pumped from underground pools in the Oat Mtn syncline.
We navigated up a very overgrown, faint use trail that climbed the Pico anticline, through what not all that long ago was an oil drilling operation, the only visible remains now being a chain link fence gate with no sense of what side was once within it or outside. The trail up Towsley Peak was barely distinguishable, but I had a historic GPS track that kept us along what remained. After a swift gain of 1,300 ft, we emerged onto the crest of the Pico Anticline by mid morning and claimed Towsley Peak for the Eis Piraten flag.
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Now we journeyed to the west along the narrow crest of the Pico Anticline, following a slightly better defined path that would eventually lead one to Pico Canyon, a destination we would not reach, because our destiny lay higher to the south where Oat Mtn and its antenna array loomed along the horizon.
A single ridge could lead us there, Towsley and Pico Canyons plunging to either side. This was a route not even David R had entirely navigated. No record exists of anyone making it to the crest of the Santa Susanna Mtns. But for myself and the 6 brave souls who had dared follow my lead into this obscure thrust-faulted corner of the transverse ranges, I had every intention of writing new history that day. And so with our loppers and machetes unsheathed, we wearily entered the unknown, surrendering ourselves to the destiny this unnamed ridge had for us. All who enter are fools.... any who emerge are Gods.
Game trails would come and go within a matrix of toyon berry, chamise and white sage dotted with yuccas. But for the most part the ridge offered a line of weakness in the tangled green carpet, and we exploited it wielding glove and blade.
Where the ridge widened near the top the brush battle intensified before we emerged (in Godly fashion?) onto the Palo Sola Fire Truck Trail, and Oat Mtn within striking distance. Views now stretched to the south across the Simi Valley, through the craggy Simi Hills, the jagged western Santa Monicas, and the expansive Oxnard Plain all the way to the misty Great Ocean in the beyond world. This was a celestial place that no internet trip report starting from the Santa Clarita valley had ever lead to. The Palo Sola lead us past fringe settlements and unknowable expanses to the point where the warm sun had begun to enrich into the afternoon golden hue any adventurer far from home can read past the beauty to the danger which will inevitably follow. Thats all to say our precious daylight was in decline, and I halted the forward march to take inventory of who amongst the ranks were feeling motivated to take the return plunge strait down into the heart of Towsley Canyon. It was a route down into uncharted and unexplored depths, taking a person on an unguided tour of the Pliocene, into a mythical unreal realm of unthinkably dense brush, labyrinthine sandstone cliffs, plunging waterfalls, and exhumed mammalian megafauna oozing up in black unholy resurrection from freshly hewn chasms in the earth. Its a hell of a place to find yourself after the fall of night, and the decision to attempt that route back to the i5 was a grave one. And as the hours passed, graver still.
With water running low, only 2 members stepped forward with a willingness to attempt this wild route - Wes and a fellow Berklee alum David. These were enthusiastic, undaunted men of adventure, but I knew little of their limits or judgement in the face of the adversities which would lay ahead in the canyon below. I was hesitant. Then the inimitable Dima, having been graciously donated an unopened powerade from Keith, offered to join, and that was enough to convince me we had a shred of hope for survival. My rose gardening gloves sheathed my forearms, kevlar(?) gators tightened around my ankles, sunglasses emplaced around my skull, hat tightened. My loppers were actually packed back into my pack. My pulse slowed, eyes narrowed, field of vision sharpened and I entered a state of being where nothing but the obstacles directly in front of me had any relevance. The four of us plunged unto the breach, and it soon got really, really bad. Like this ridge was absolutely brutal with thick brush. I was in a dissociative state of pushing forward, but I eventually had to take pause and evaluate what was happening. There was no mercy here, no moments of respite. It was fully on 12-foot tall brush that we continuously crashed through, along a narrow line bereft of options as cliffs plunged on either side. We ducked, weaved, crash and thrashed, but after an hour we had progressed a quarter of a mile. There was about 5 miles to make it back to our cars, we were low on water and it was getting towards 4pm. We had headlamps, but this decision to attempt the plunge into the canyon was with the expectation on my part this ridge would be similar to the one we came up on, and that was not at all the case. This ridge was a totally different beast, and a fierce one at that. We emerged on a small ledge of sandstone and I halted the team to evaluate.
The spot offered views to the east of the cliffs that had stopped us the year before, with snow-capped Baldy in the distance far past the upturned slabs of sand and siltstone of our immediate anticlines.
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There was debate concerning the pros and cons of continuing. I served a shot of homemade acorn liqueur brewed in Eaton Canyon that for a time had Wes and David convinced to press on, but once that wore off we were all in basic agreement that the math of our remaining water and daylight was not adding up at the pace these conditions were forcing us to move at. Our ridge stretched before us, with little indication anything was apt to change for the miles we still had to cover.
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Thus we resigned to backtrack. It was not an easy decision, as we all wanted to explore the waterfall and Pliocene playground that satellite imagery suggested was very cool. But I made the executive decision in the end letting Towsley Canyon win this day. But like last year, I vowed to return.
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Thrashing and crashing the quarter mile back to the road, we followed in the footprints of the rest of the participants down the road of the south side of Oat Mtn, a very, very different place of open grassland and oak savanna, the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles sprawling below.
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We explored the post-apocalyptic NIKE missile site, with Dima lowering himself into the underground missile silo with mixed results. Then it was down into the far friendlier Brown's canyon and Jeko's waiting subaru, who was kind enough to shuttle us back to our cars in Newhall pass.
With that our all-day adventure in the Santa Susanna Mtns came to a close. It was a terrific group (Sorry JeffH couldn't join!) and it was awesome to have my father along with my new mountain pirate friends for a good session of brush warfare and SoCal exploration. I've been navigating the backcountry with him since my 4th birthday! I was as ever impressed with his ability to keep up with us all while barely breaking a sweat. Conquering Oat Mtn from the north side was satisfying revenge after having been turned around the year prior, and there yet remains more adventure to be had in the deepest depths of Towsley Canyon. I vow to again return.
11.5 miles, 3764 feet of gain.
