The Piedra Blanca formation and Pine Mountain near Ojai. 
A sign point to the Gene Marshall-Piedra Blanca Trail. 
Elephant Rock and Pine Mountain. 
Pools near the Twin Forks camp. 
A metal sign directs visitors to Twin Forks Camp and Pine Mountain Lodge. 
A boulder with circular petroglyphs that archaeologists call “cupules.” 
Below-freezing temperatures leave a frosty coating.
On the Friday and Saturday of the recent Presidents Day weekend, my teaching colleague Chris Caretto and I hiked the three easy miles to the popular Piedra Blanca Camp in the Sespe Wilderness inland from Ojai. After a break and a snack at Piedra Blanca, we ambled up the beautiful winding trail another half-mile to hidden Twin Forks Camp and then began slogging up the steep ascent of the Pine Mountain massif (see 4.1.1. for trail information and driving directions).
The 220,000-acre Sespe Wilderness embodies a vast dry landscape dominated by hard chaparral plants such as chamise, scrub oak, Manzanita and other thorny, scratchy plants — usually dense but seldom exceeding 6 or 7 feet in height. Our beautiful southern Los Padres National Forest would be better described as the Los Padres National Shrubland since less than 10 percent of the area has the beloved conifers.
However, the Sespe River itself and the famous hot springs down-river, as well as the much smaller Piedra Blanca Creek tributary, bestow riparian variety and an interesting change from the desertlike brown hillsides studded with chaparral and yucca. We chose to go up Piedra Blanca Creek toward Pine Mountain as the more remote trail and, indeed, during the entire eight-mile day, we encountered just two other humans!
After crossing the flowing Sespe River itself, without getting wet boots, we saw the first sign, a rather new one of blonde wood, and thus simply followed the sign for the Gene Marshall-Piedra Blanca Trail. Hikers always call it the Piedra Blanca Trail.
After 10 minutes trudging uphill, there's another wooden sign indicating that visitors are now entering the federal Sespe Wilderness area. Shortly thereafter, we had the privilege of walking through the spectacular Piedra Blanca formation that gives its name to the creek and the trail running alongside.
About 1½ miles in, we suddenly could hear the acoustic roar of gushing Piedra Blanca Creek and soon found ourselves hiking beside lovely pools beneath leafless cottonwoods. Spring is strenuously seeking to break out despite the very cool nights and still-short days.
There was a huge white tent in Piedra Blanca Camp and cords of freshly sawn logs, but no campers or officials about. The huge site is frequently used by youth groups, and horse caravans also go there fairly often. We sped on, since our goals included reaching the next camp at Twin Forks.
Just above this campsite, we noted the confluence of Piedra Blanca Creek and the North Fork Piedra Blanca Creek; the latter angles up toward Pine Mountain Lodge. Without the large metal sign and right arrow for Twin Forks (see photo), hikers would likely continue on past the concealed campsite across the creek.
The metal sign directing visitors to ford the tricky creek crossing over to Twin Forks Camp itself also indicates that continuing straight ahead up the gnarly trail leads to 6,000-foot Pine Mountain Lodge Camp.
The handy sign fails to inform the hiker that this continuing path (22W03) punishes with a 2,400-foot ascent over 3.3 lung-busting miles. I have managed this effort in the past, but only after an overnight at Twin Forks Camp, which has no table and a paucity of tent spots.
As a former Mediterranean archaeologist, I had some other rambling right-brain goals, so after doing some of the 3.3-mile ascent, we bagged reaching the Lodge Camp and scouted about just soaking in the mountainside. The lodge would have had some snow, and it was an easy decision to make it an eight-mile roundtrip day vs. a 15-mile Bataan death march.
On the way back and during some dusty bushwhacking and planned chaparral-crawling, one of us spotted a sacred Chumash boulder incised with the circular petroglyphs that archaeologists call “cupules.” In the photograph, note that there are also cupules on the other side of the boulder. California rock art is not limited to the justly famous pictographs, but there are also a variety of petroglyphs (incisions into natural stone). Along with the so-called Western archaic tradition and “pit and groove” petroglyph styles, the most common elements are these widely distributed small cupules. Cupules are “cup-shaped marks distinctive for their ubiquity, incredible longevity and impressive uniformity (Malotki and Dissanayake, p. 75; see 4.1.1.).
My hiking colleagues and I have seen several sites with an array of cupules; for example, they're all over Carizzo Plain’s Painted Rock site. The cupules on this boulder seemed out of place, not so close to painted rock art sites, and we enjoyed our little discovery. While archaeologists believe they have been carved out of the sandstone by rhythmic pounding, which would take a long time to even cut out one, Malotki and Dissanayake also note that while it’s likely “pecking” them out came first (the pounding), “grinding or even drilling may have been the preferred option on rock surfaces with pre-existing natural pits.” Some observers feel they can detect abstract designs in the cupule array, but most scholars aren’t sure about this or even the exact function of the cupules.
We started our hike from the signed Piedra Blanca Trailhead parking lot and spent nearly eight hours in the canyon and on the mountain. After such a long day, we then drove one mile from the trailhead parking area around to Middle Lion Campground on a small creek. (Bring your own water!) It’s a pretty grody campsite without privacy or much tree cover at this time of year (cost is $20)! We made a small fire in the provided firepit, and enjoyed the table and conversation over delicious carne asada burritos and fruit juice.
The night of Feb. 14 was cold at 3,200 feet. I got a reading of 24 degrees Fahrenheit and found plenty of ice on the exposed back hinge of my red truck the next morning. Caretto slept rough on the ground in his Big Agnes tent, but as he noted, an excellent down bag makes it all fine.
4-1-1
» It’s a 60-mile drive to the Piedra Blanca Trailhead in Rose Valley (this was once the main Lion Campground): Take Highway 101 to Ventura, then Highway 33 from there to Ojai and continue to the Rose Valley turnoff and drive to the very end. Park. E. Malotki and E. Dissanayake, “Early Rock Art of the American West — the Geometric Enigma” (University of Washington Press, 2018).
— 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.
