Continued...
My daughter's volleyball tournament in LA
wrapped up a bit earlier than expected on Monday,
leaving me with much of the afternoon. I left downtown and headed north and west on the
101 (in SoCal, highway numbers are always preceeded by "the", unlike the rest of the
country). I was heading to Ventura County where I had some prominence summits in mind.
One was an FAA site, two were on private property, and a bonus fourth summit was a USN
communications site - there was some risk involved in the afternoon plans.
Laguna Peak / La Jolla Peak
These two summits are located on the western boundary of Pt. Mugu State Park at the far
west end of the Santa Monica Mountains. There is a paved road leading to the summit of
Laguna Peak, but it is off-limits to non-military personnel. A little-used road continues
from Laguna to La Jolla Peak, site of an FAA VOR station, an omnidirectional beacon used
in civilian aircraft navigation. 25 years ago when I used to fly single engine planes, I'd
use these beacons to fix my position and help navigate up and down the state. Now I was
making a habit of visiting these sites on foot. Rather than use the road which would leave
me exposed to easy observation, I used the
at the state park to approach from
within the park by a slightly more circuitous route. had swept over the
area in the
past few years leaving the hillsides scorched and making cross-country travel rather easy.
Where I left the Chumash Trail as it went over a saddle with , I turned
left and headed up the barren slopes. A leading up this ridgeline
towards Laguna Peak was evident even with the brush burned away. The flora was beginning
its recovery, sprouting new shoots from the base of the and
.
Some even managed to flourish in this ashen environment. A boundary
that followed the ridge was now mostly fallen and of little use. Climbing
higher, a layer of coastal fog enshrouded much of the higher reaches, obscuring what would
otherwise be of the Pacific to . This was not the
day to get views. Atop Laguna Peak I found a modern Navy , not
the disused Cold War relic I'd hoped for. The area was surrounded by three fences, the
outermost one rather formidable. As I neared the fence and the
marking the Navy property, I heard a loud alarm buzzer go off from somewhere inside. Did
they have motion sensors on the periphery, I wondered? They did not. The buzzer was
incidental to my approach, used to warn personnel inside that the giant antenna was about
to start moving. It arced about 30 degrees from its initial upright position to settle
into a before going quiet again. Clearly I would
not be trying to reach the highpoint of Laguna today.
The higher summit along the ridge is La Jolla Peak, and it was to this I next headed,
following the old, little-used road that I found running atop . I
hiked along for about half an hour to reach the installed at the
leveled summit. Locating an actual highpoint would be somewhat futile, but I wandered
around the periphery until I found the . Unlike the Navy
installation, the security at the FAA site is minimal, consisting of a simple
whose only real capability was to keep cows out. I dropped south
off the La Jolla summit into La Jolla Valley and back into the state park. There I picked
up and followed it back to the saddle with Mugu Peak and then back down
to where I'd started.
Red Mountain
Red Mtn is a P1K located in the coastal range between Lake Casitas and the Pacific Ocean
northwest of Ventura. At least half of the surrounding land is managed by county, state or
federal officials according to some maps, but getting to the summit seems to be difficult
no matter how one attempts it due to private property concerns. I chose to use an
all-private route from the north from Casitas Vista Rd (which used to
be Casitas Pass Rd back in the day before Casitas Dam & Reservoir were built across
roadway). The land on this side of the mountain is part of a
that has no permanent buildings along an old that reaches to the Red
Mtn summit ridge. I hiked the
road starting at 5p in the hopes that any owners or visitors would have vacated the
property by that time. I was happy to see not a soul during the hike. Poison oak is found
pretty much everywhere in the area so cross-country travel would be ill-advised for anyone
susceptible to the nasty stuff. There is some road maintenance equipment found in a
clearing near the start, an equestrian a bit further up the
road, and a located several miles further up.
can be seen from various points along the road during the ascent.
I took an hour to reach the end of the private ranch whereupon I onto
property owned by yet others. But by now I was less than ten minutes from the summit and
far from most domiciles and vehicles. The summit ridge is home to a number of
but none festooned the highpoint itself. That was reserved
for a small that might be almost class 3 if someone had not taken
the time to create and line the edge with a .
The summit features (mislabeled "READ") but no register. It has
a cozy perch to sit and take in . covered the
Pacific and most of the coast to a height of about 1,800ft. This left
to the west as a small island in the fog in the late afternoon sunshine. With some jogging
took less than
45 minutes and I was once again happy to not have any encounters traveling through the
ranch.
Rincon Mountain
I normally would have called it a day at this point and start work on finding a place to
spend the night, but I wanted to get nearby Rincon Mtn done before heading off on a long
drive to the northern part of Santa Barbara County. Since it was also on private property
I thought it best to do at night or very early in the morning. There was no moon to be
had this evening, but I decided to do it as a night hike anyway - that would leave me
free to grab dinner in Santa Barbara on my way through. I drove back out to SR33, then
north to Ojai where I picked up SR150 heading west. The sun had set before I got over
East Casitas Pass and it was nearly dark before I'd found a place to get me off the road
and near to the gated dirt road I'd identified on the north side of Rincon. Though there
are numerous homes along both sides of SR150 in this area, there were none along the
dirt road I took leading to the mountain. The road was well-traveled only for the first
half mile where it went to a work site where it appears someone was in the process of
installing a vineyard, orchard or other agricultural business (of the strictly legal
variety). The hilly ground was
cleared, heavily bulldozed and awaiting further work. I passed by a small collection of
construction trucks on my way through, but all was quiet at this time, now nearly dark.
Past this site is another gate onto adjacent property, the road looking as though it
hasn't been used in a long time. Though not overgrown with brush, there were no tire
tracks to suggest recent usage. This put me at ease as I used a headlamp to negotiate the
remaining two miles to the summit. I didn't mind the chill of the fog as I climbed through
the damp layer of cloud, the road steep and demanding. This would have been much tougher
had I started early in the morning, but since I had gotten a
late start I still had plenty of reserves. A shadow moving slowly about six feet from me
startled me out of complacency. It seemed too slow for a rabbit or coyote. Shining my
headlamp at it, I caught only a glimpse
of the white stripe down the
black fur, realizing it was a skunk. One of these days I'm going to get too close to one
of these nocturnal carnivores and get blasted. I waited until it had disappeared off the
road and into the brush before continuing, but for the rest of the outing I was cautiously
looking out for more of the same.
The summit of Rincon is crowned with of antennae, generators and
technician shacks, surrounded by fences. The fences are not difficult to surmount, but
there didn't seem to be any higher ground within the fenced areas, the summit having been
nicely bulldozed. At the north end of the large summit area are
of what appears to have
been a lookout tower. Nothing remained of the structure besides these pads.
I was just above the fog layer and given a brilliant display of the
stars in the night sky, but the beach communities below on two sides were little more than
a faint, hazy glow through the fog. I retraced my steps down the same route to
finish up the night around 9p. I would be up for several more hours as I drove out to
US101 and Santa Barbara, got dinner at Jack-in-the-Box off State St, then drove up to San
Marcos Pass along SR154 where I found a nice spot off Camino Cielo to spend the night. Too
late to watch movies, I curled up in the back of the van for a good night's sleep...
Continued...