Remnants of the late 19th-century homesteaders’ farming implements can be seen near the Sisquoc River along the “Great Circle Loop” in the San Rafael Wilderness. 
A sign for the San Rafael Wilderness at the beginning of the ““Great Circle Loop.” 
A map of the “Great Circle” wilderness loop. 
The historic Manzana Schoolhouse. 
The writer at a typical backcountry campsite. 
Backcountry winter camping with a fire. 
A cabin at the South Fork of the Sisquoc River.
I’ve endured several “disaster” backpacking treks scattered among many aggressive outings during the past 48 years.
In the San Rafael Wilderness loop described below, guru Franko, his amazing dog, Mädl, and I barged around the awesome Hurricane Deck formation in three days at the end of 1976. This very challenging trip included scrambling 21 miles along the Sisquoc River, and today this section is now designated as part of the relatively new (1996) — and still incomplete — 400-mile Condor Trail.
These 21 miles furnish backpackers with one of the most remote and beautiful pure wilderness stretches in California.
Audacious backcountry hiker Dennis Gagnon’s venerable 1981 Exploring the Santa Barbara Backcountry book celebrated this exhausting backpacking trek threading through the entrancing core of the fabled San Rafael Wilderness, calling it the “Great Circle Loop” (and also the Grand Circle trek).
Gagnon wrote the following about this gnarly adventure: “Those who savor cool, green canyons, pioneer history, and a lengthy wilderness experience will surely want to set a week or more aside some spring to sample the delights of this Grand Circle excursion. … You will experience the deep and remote Sisquoc Canyon, where a group of faith healers, often mistakenly called Mormons, settled briefly in the 1880s after traveling from Kansas.” (pages 54-55)
When fellow UC Santa Barbara graduate student and trailmaster Frank Hudson suggested that we take on this one, we chose to make it even more demanding in two excruciating ways: heading out right at the sacred winter solstice (Dec. 20, 1976) and turning Gagnon’s suggested seven days (six overnights) into a more intense, three-day workout nightmare (only two overnights).
Ah, to be 29 again, young and so in love with raw wilderness immersion! Thus, in my exuberant patriarchal hubris, I said, “Sure, let’s do it!” (Neither of us had made this circuit before.)
We knew that we would need to backpack about 15 miles per day, and that we could expect cold nights well below 32 degrees, but we lusted to circle the holy Hurricane Deck knowing full well that we wouldn’t encounter any other hikers attempting this during chilly winter days.
As part of our preparation, guru Franko and I debated the important merits of setting off in a cosmically auspicious direction — tramping along on a clockwise arc, or in a counter-clockwise direction?
We set out on Dec. 20, 43 years ago, from Nira Camp after making the weighty decision to chug down the Lower Manzana Creek Trail in a counter-clockwise direction. (See the “San Rafael Wilderness Map” and follow the hand-drawn red line.)
We passed through Potrero, Coldwater and Horseshoe Meadow backcountry camps — all described in recent columns — and after more than 35 shallow creek crossings reached Manzana Schoolhouse Camp. We made a quick lunch near the still-standing structure there where the Sisquoc River enfolds the Manzana as a tributary (becoming the Santa Maria River some miles seaward).
Pushing on, admiring a rare condor soaring, we shifted over to the Sisquoc River and began hiking east, upstream, making it to desolate Water Canyon Camp, 12.7 miles from Nira Camp. Along the way, we spotted remnants of the late 19th-century homesteaders’ archaic chimneys and farming implements (also remnants on the Manzana). The Hiram Wheat experiment didn’t last too long (late 1880s and 1890s), although the faith healer did give his name to 2,400-foot Wheat Peak near the Schoolhouse site.
It had been a long day, beginning with the 90-minute drive from Santa Barbara. Water Canyon Camp is barebones, a crude firepit and one or two iron grills, with fallen sycamore boughs to sit on (and a weird little table).
Happily exhausted, we broiled a small tri-tip that Franko had lugged in, enjoyed pre-cooked potatoes and red wine, then crept into my two-man “Mountain Hut” tent, with Mädl also sheltered under the covered “vestibule.” Sadly, we were up on Dec. 21 by 4 a.m., making another small fire as we cursed our frozen fingers while arduously rolling up our gear and repacking it.
Day two became a more challenging 17.3-mile backpack monster, laboriously crossing and recrossing the Sisquoc River until we reached South Fork Station Camp (with its very cool cabin). Weather reports indicated winter cold, but no rainfall forecast.
On this demanding journey, we had wet boots much of the way, crossing miles of Manzana and Sisquoc watercourses, and we went through four really remote camps (listed on Bryant’s 2015 map, see 4-1-1.): Mormon, Miller, Abel and Sycamore. These are basically horse camps, and Abel teemed with ticks. We also found the Miller and Cliff camps (no longer active, and not on Bryant’s excellent map).
The photograph of South Fork’s cabin dates from 2011, but back in 1976, we deliberately stayed outside the then-vermin-infested cabin next to the corral (much nicer today). After another freezing night, we were up again very early for day three.
We left the main Sisquoc River here and clambered up the gushing “south fork” to Lonnie Davis Camp. We then broke over to White Ledge Camp (no water), then up across part of the ’Deck to Manzana Narrows Camp, and completed the 14.4-mile day by staggering into Nira after sunset and in the full dark (see map here).
Why do I call this triumphant quest a sort of “disaster”? Every morning, we began hiking in the pre-dawn darkness in below-freezing temperatures; every evening when we strode into our new campsite, it was also freezing and the crude sites were cloaked in darkness.
While we saw many amazing sights, including ratcheting rattlesnakes, scuttling centipedes, lizards and roaming black bears, we had to maintain a brutal pace as we lugged our 45-pound Kelty backpacks. (In 1976, I’d never heard of “ultra-light” backpacks.) We did know about three pictograph sites, but were far too exhausted to break off trail and search for any of them.
Later recollections reveal my intense, linear, Western “go for it” male mentality of achievement, competition and braggadocio. We sped by sacred sites and gave our bodies very few breaks.
Yet as we studied the abandoned farming implements and tumbled-down chimneys of the 19th-century Wheat sect, I later realized how much smarter the Native Americans had been in pre-Contact times. While Chumash and Yokuts bands certainly visited these deep backcountry river valleys at good times like May to June and early autumn, I’m unaware of any records of permanent villages sites back there.
Rainfall at less than 16 inches per year makes year-round living impossible. The Chumash did have crucial ceremonies in this backcountry at winter solstice — another reason Franko and I thought it an auspicious time to trek.
Wheat and his folk might have noted that there were no indigenous peoples around to contend with, and there were excellent reasons for this absence. Thus, I ask myself what am I missing today? How is Western technology (Wheat’s iron implements, weapons (deer were plentiful), beasts of burden blinding me and us? They implicitly believed “rain followed the plow” (!), and today we believe that dystopian climate change hasn’t doomed our civilization (!).
Intrepid backpackers still undertake the “Great Circle” wilderness loop today, and they certainly enjoy one of the most remote and beautiful regions in Southern California. While I have not yet hiked much of the new Condor Trail, since 1976 I’ve made this punishing Great Circle trek four more times.
All the subsequent journeys started off in a clockwise direction from Nira and in late spring as Gagnon recommended; we took much more time and enjoyed layover days on the sunny Sisquoc. These experiences were easier, more fun and stimulated “deep time” forest immersion episodes.
4-1-1
» Bryan Conant’s “2015 San Rafael Wilderness and Backcountry Guide” (map) is terrific and the “44.4-mile” figure is his. Dennis Gagnon, Exploring the Santa Barbara Backcountry (Western Tanager Press, 1981) is still useful. More about the Hiram Wheat late 19th-century farming collective is in Dan McCaslin's Autobiography in the Anthropocene (Lulu.com, 2019), pages 37-38.
— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in the Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at cazmania3@gmail.com. Click here to read additional columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
