Leaders: Jennifer Washington, George Wysup
I don't know why, but I thought it would be a good idea to lead a day hike to
Reyes and Haddock, in Los Padres National Forest, by a different route, from Thorn
Meadows. An out and back would be maybe 32 miles with 8000' gain; no way, not
for this old dude. So it had to be with car shuttle.
It wasn't practical to do all this hiking after setting up the long shuttle on
the same day. The shuttle between the Mutau gate on Lockwood Valley road and
the usual Reyes trailhead, at the end of Pine Mtn road, is a twisty and bumpy
60 miles round trip for each car.
Jennifer Washington agreed to co-lead with me and consented to helping me set
up the shuttle. I calculated that the extra miles involved in this shuttle
would release enough CO2 to raise the average temperature of Earth by about 1
degree F. But this is HPS, after all, so why not. We decided it was best to set
up the shuttle on Saturday and do the hike on Sunday, leaving enough time for a
hike to Thorn Point on Saturday. A fun and fattening car camp seemed
appropriate.
We scheduled this for the weekend of Oct 11 and 12. We even attracted a fine
gaggle of participants; Dave Benson, Keith Christensen, Scott Gabbert, and Anne
Howell. We admitted to these participants that there were parts of the hike
that we had never been to.
The first thing I noticed was that the roads and campgrounds were clogged with
pickup trucks driven by large men in camouflage clothing and orange hats. Yes I
had done it again - scheduled a hike in deer habitat for opening weekend of
deer season. My many encounters with hunters have all been cordial and we have
never come close to getting shot at, so I didn't consider this a big deal. Most
hunters are true sportsmen and know what they are about and are quite safety
conscious. Then there's Dick Cheney, but I don't think he was around. I did
have an orange hat and a yellow windbreaker to provide some visibility. And I
cautioned my group not to wear their fake antlers.
We started our hike to Thorn Point at 11:15 in unseasonably cool weather, with
a gentle breeze. We returned at a little after 3 pm and we killed some time
trolling for a good camp site. We soon realized that having a campfire would be
illegal as well as very unwise, so we just found any old flat spot and set up
our wagons in a circle for defense. We immediately let down our guard by having
happy hour and pot luck. When the sun set the temperature began to plummet, as
it always does in clear dry weather. The forecast at our 4800' elevation site
was for gusty winds and a low of 31 deg.
By 8 pm everyone except yours truly was hunkered down in a vehicle or a
tent. My car was the shuttle car, located elsewhere, and I am too lazy to pitch
a tent in clear weather. [Actually it's the un-pitching that I hate to do.] So
I slept under the stars and the almost full moon in my 20 degree rated
bag. Should be plenty warm, right? Wrong. As the night progressed more and more
of the residual heat of the atmosphere radiated into outer space. The good news
is that there was little wind. The bad news is that my happy hour imbibing, in
concert with my ageing prostate, made it necessary for me to make repeated
trips to an (ad hoc) restroom. After each trip I donned another warm garment in
an attempt to be cozy. I noted that the water in the bottle next to my cot was
frozen as were my toes (despite the heavy socks). Fortunately, much of my
food and drink were in a cooler on ice, which kept it from freezing. The
weather guy was way wrong. Scott's cheap-o thermometer said 10 degrees at 6:30
am. I don't really think it got that cold, but neither can I say for sure it
didn't.
Here's another law of hiking: The colder the morning temperature, the later the
hike will start. I had planned a 7 am start, but we didn't get moving until
8:04. We started from the Cedar Creek trailhead, hiking past a couple of camo
dudes with rifles, as we scared away all the deer, and up the dry Cedar Creek
for 5+ miles to a shallow saddle. There were plentiful tracks of deer, bear,
and cougar along the trail, but no more hunters. The ridge heading to the left
here goes to Thorn Point (that's another story). We continued
down the trail for another mile to Pine Mountain Lodge (Google it!)
campsite. There is no longer any vestige of the old log hunting lodge built in
the 1890's by a group of hunters who called themselves 'the Sisquoc
rangers'. Here the Cedar Creek trail ends at the Gene Marshall Piedra Blanca
National Recreational Trail. There is no sign here indicating such; indeed this
grand sounding trail is rather faint in several spots and seems to get little
use by humans.
We turned right and continued westward (ho), the trail here being far from
flat, finally reaching Piedra Blanca Creek and, soon, Three Mile campsite where
we took a well-deserved break at a picnic table. We could divine no reason for
the name of this campsite, as it seems not to be 3 miles from anything. Another
very twisty 2 miles up the trail took us to Haddock campsite, where the Reyes
Peak trail tees into the Piedra Blanca. The trail spends precious little time
following the creek because the creek has created a rugged gorge. The trail
does cross the creek at several spots.
In any case, I was now in familiar territory, having hiked to Haddock campsite,
and then to Haddock and Reyes, from Reyes Creek campground on the Lockwood
Valley Road. We went the steeply up the Reyes Peak trail, attaining the top of
Pine Mountain Ridge and, soon, Haddock Peak itself. The trail appears to be
going back to nature in some areas as the scrub buckthorn is taking over. From
Haddock it was the usual route 1 stroll along the ridge, over Reyes Peak, and
down to my trusty 200 k miles 4Runner. The time was 6:04 pm, almost exactly 10
hours after we started. We managed to stuff all of us in the vehicle and drove
slowly and safely back to Thorn Meadows.
Jennifer's GPS showed the trip stats to be 16.6 miles with 5600' elevation
gain. Transferring the GPS track to TOPO showed the stats to be 16.0 miles with
4800' gain. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in this gap. To avoid incurring
the wrath of Jennifer I will say that her GPS is probably closest to truth.
If you do this hike in May or June conditions would be much wetter, maybe even
too wet. But you could get by without carrying much water. All of us were
dazzled by the beauty of this Los Padres terrain. Try it, you'll like it.
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