The elusive Chorro Grande Trail leads up from Highway 33 and ascends the southern flank of Ventura County’s Pine Mountain.
After driving more than 50 miles from Santa Barbara and past Ojai on Highway 33, you need to pay close attention for the smallish sign on the right side of the road: “Chorro Grande Trail (23W05).” It’s easy to miss since the spectacular dark cliffs above the scenic roadway grab your attention (see 4.1.1.).
The entire south-facing side of the Pine Mountain massif gets less than 16 inches of rainfall per year, and while the higher elevations (above 6,000 feet) will have some snowpack, this two-mile trek features an austere aridity and mostly dense chaparral.
Writing about the harsh Patagonian desert, Bruce Chatwin wrote words that also fit the spectacular terrain wild Pete and I hiked through to reach Oak Camp: “The Patagonian desert is not a desert of sand or gravel, but a low thicket of grey-leaved thorns … [even] Charles Darwin found its negative qualities irresistable … more than any of the wonders he had seen, these ‘arid wastes’ had taken such firm possession of his mind” (“In Patagonia,” p. 15).
Most world religions reference water as a kind of ultimate source. In Mesopotamian mythology, the gods and subsequently all beings first arose from the fusion of salt water (Tiamat) and sweet water (Apsu). Hindu holy books explain that all of the inhabitants of the Earth emerged from the primordial sea. And most Chumash rock art sites are situated near water sources, even if intermittent like Chorro Grande Creek.
This scramble along a sketchy trail has taken such “firm possession of my mind” that I return there again and again, savoring the stony gray plateaus jutting up at awkward angles, the tenacity of the dry scrub, chamise, buckthorn, chokecherry and various other thorny shrubs.
The Chorro Grande Trail begins at 4,085-feet elevation, rising only 600 feet in the two miles as we follow the winding trail. Happily, there have been a few cairns placed at strategic spots, and we set up a few more, and you can often see the lonely Highway 33 snaking below.
All the springs I know are way up near the 6,600-foot ridge — Raspberry, Maguire and Chorro Grande — and we wanted to assess the impact of our two recent wet winters. Surprisingly, Chorro Grande Creek was flowing nicely at Oak Camp once we arrived. You can see wild Pete in the photograph next to a lovely pool of ice cold creek water at the camp.
The apparent paradox stirs up the mind and emotions: an incredibly dry and tough landscape, yet a watercourse streams through even in mid-July! Looking up, spectacular precipices loom high above us; peering down, we observe sacred water pouring across the rocks at our feet.
On most of these treks, reaching 7,000-foot Reyes Peak Campground (on Pine Mountain) has been my hiking goal. That means five miles uphill gaining nearly 3,000 feet in elevation — extremely tough going.
It also means leaving a car up at Reyes Peak Campground first, before driving back to the starting spot on Highway 33. You want to really push it and can’t get a hiking buddy to accompany?
Try my beloved hike-bike shuttle: Drive to Reyes Peak with your bike, cycle down Highway 33 to the beginning spot, stash the bike, do the long ascent and find succor at the pre-parked vehicle. (I do not advocate hiking solo, but I do so myself at times.)
When nearing Oak Camp after almost two miles of hiking through colorful Sespe sandstone, it used to be that many hikers walked right by the campsite since it’s somewhat camouflaged.
The U.S. Forest Service has put up better signage, and you see from the photograph that the “tent” symbol includes a left arrow, and the “go ahead” arrow leads on up the path to Reyes Peak Campground. Some of the older trail maps have Oak Camp on the eastern side of the trail, but the three sites are on the western side. You don’t want to miss this since there are no other campsites or water sourcers until Chorro Grande Springs itself just below Reyes Peak.
The three campsites at Oak, each with a firepit and an iron grill, stretch along the flowing creek. They sit beneath a dense umbrella of interior live oaks.
We encountered zero campers, and in fact, zero humans on the entire four-mile round-trip. Don’t settle for the first campsite, but hike along the creek to the second one, and the third camp is the nicest of all.
There are similarities to the Piedra Blanca sites I’ve discussed elsewhere: the signature heavy oak cover with zillions of acorns scattered all over, the gurgling creek, and dense chaparral outside the oak canopy.
The 2015 Chorro Fire swept through here, but we were heartened by the extraordinary ability of the chaparral foliage to spring back. There were bushes that had grown above my head in just a few years — and spiky blackened manzanita branches stuck out all over with dense new growth surging up from the base in the fire ecology famous for this area.
While a beautiful and fairly easy trek, we did begin hiking at 7 a.m., which meant we left Santa Barbara at 5:30 a.m. You just have to set out this early in the cruel summer heat. The Oak Camp hike has also been a training trek for the next one aimed to reach Reyes Peak Campground. For that endeavor, I’ll begin hiking at 5:30 a.m.; yes, the heat and aridity oblige such measures. The additional 3.4 miles from Oak Camp to the top covers 2,400 feet and presents a terrific challenge.
4-1-1
» Take Highway 101 south to the Highway 33 turnoff at Ventura. Continue past Ojai and Wheeler Gorge, past Rose Valley and the Sespe Gorge. I usually miss this sign, but when you reach the defunct “Pine Mountain Inn” buildings, you will know you missed it. Turn back, and locate it a few miles back on Highway 33. There is a generous dirt parking area across the road (no fee). The best map is “Tom Harrison Maps: Sespe Wilderness Trail Map.”
— 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.
