The remote Santa Barbara County backcountry potreros (meadows) along Sierra Madre Ridge above the Sisquoc River have never been fruitful enough for year-round Native American villages, although various tribes visited those higher slopes for annual gatherings and for solstice rituals.
The 5,700-foot McPherson Peak looms high as you rumble up Bates Canyon Road in 4-wheel-drive from Highway 166 on the Cuyama side (see 4-1-1), and when you top out near the peak. Spectacular southern views deep into the Sisquoc River valley will make you stop the truck in awe.
Although only about 40 miles from Santa Barbara as the hawk flies, several transverse ranges and rocky badlands forced this Santa Barbara motorist to drive a half-oval through Santa Maria (111 miles). It’s 117 miles on the other half of the oval running through Ojai and the Maricopa Highway (133) and then the 166 (again) — take your pick (4-1-1).
From the parking area just below McPherson Peak, with its many tall antennae, backpack six miles past the locked gate down the Sierra Madre Ridge Road.
Note the various springs as you hike into Painted Rock Camp, the official U.S. Forest Service campsite near the sacred rock formation. Over the years, I’ve hiked it a few times, mountain-biked in and overnighted off the bike at Painted Rock, and even taken the very steep “backside” trail that’s now closed to the public.
Wherever you are in this vast upper region surrounded by hundreds of acres of grassy meadow, the views demand your full attention, and you realize deep time is happening to you. Again.
In early spring 1993, friends dropped my 11-year-old son and me off at McPherson. Then, Gabe and I backpacked to this very Painted Rock Camp, went down into the Sisquoc the next day to Sycamore Camp on the Condor Trail, went another day downriver to Abel, to Mormon, to Manzana Schoolhouse, and then 9 miles up the Manzana Creek to a car at Nira Camp. I described this joyful jaunt in my book, Eternal Backcountry Return, and now recall that it truly started at Painted Rock.
Painted Rock Camp is a regular U.S. Forest Service backcountry camp, located next to a prominent sandstone formation just off the continuing Sierra Madre Road (barred and closed back at McPherson Peak).
While ancient conifer forests likely predominated here at one time, today cattle grazing and drought have created the entrancing wide flat potreros (lead photo). The camp offers a single broken-down wooden table, an iron fire-ring and a decrepit but efficient pit-toilet. A once-stately oak giant fell sometime after 1993, and the Forest Service maintains a barbed-wire corral here near the outhouse.
Two nights at Painted Rock allow for exploration in several directions; please obey the sign and do not enter the pictograph cave. Walking back on the dirt track for a half-mile, you can reach the top of the Jackson Trail in about 30 minutes — it leads to a gnarly 4.3-mile drop into the Sisquoc River area at Sycamore Camp. The picturesque Jackson line cabin sits at the top of the sketchy Jackson Trail.
If you are adventurous and want to get down into the Sisquoc canyon more easily than the terrible Jackson Trail, hike the other direction from Painted Rock Camp through the Pine Corral potrero to the Sweetwater Trail (marked on the Conant map, see 4-1-1). This longer — 7 miles — but much easier trail takes you close to South Fork Station on the Sisquoc.
Ahh, when entering the long Pine Corral meadow with its gripping boulders, you are also beginning the huge Salisbury Potrero dotted with various springs (Bryan Conant’s map names five of them).
We also encountered cattle in the area in mid-November. Rust-colored California buckwheat bushes color the landscape margins next to the endless “tan” meadows of dying grasses, and these visions push onlookers into awe and deep time reflection.
Some ecologists write about California landscapes as a mixture of oak, grass and pine, and the clumps of oak dotting these upland meadows lined by buckwheat and other chaparral plants inspire reflection and relaxation — even while striding along.
The arresting “whale rocks” or boulders in the beautiful Pine Corral meadow on the way to the Sweetwater Trailhead certainly caught the attention of Native Americans and their shamans as well as recent visitors. According to some ethnographic myths, the Chumash “First People” became these whale rocks after the momentous flood described in Chumash stories.
The elders, the shamans, the ‘antap society elites, and everyone believed such transformations happened frequently — we’re in the greater sophistication of Stone Age animism. The indigenous peoples believed the entire area around the Painted Rock Campground and rock art site would have thus been imbued with sacred power.
Most informants in Thomas Blackburn’s book of oral narratives, including Maria Solares, frequently reference “the Cuyama” — I think they mean this formation and the entire surrounding area including both of today’s huge potrero-meadows. It would be considered a sacred area for healing as well as for solstice and other tribal ceremonies.
I’ve hiked and biked to this power-laden area several times, and recommend camping two nights at Painted Rock Campground as we did. In mid-November, during high-fire season, no open fires are allowed, but we were able to heat water with our small gas stoves at the table.
4-1-1
» It’s 120 miles total one-way. Drive Highway 101 to Santa Maria (54 miles), then follow lonely Highway 166 West heading east (almost 45 miles), then turn onto Cottonwood Canyon Road for 6.6 miles to Bates Campground; then another 5.8 miles in 4-wheel-drive to meet Sierra Madre Ridge Road. Up high now, turn east (left) for another slow and dusty 8.4 miles to McPherson Peak and park.
Motorists will need 4-wheel-drive for Bates and Sierra Madre Road sections; call the Forest Service to be sure the gate onto the Bates Canyon 5.8-mile segment is open (closed after rainfall). I was able to drive the last 7 miles to Painted Rock Camp as part of a Forest Service site survey team (Partners in Preservation).
» Click here for more information on Painted Rock Camp in the Cuyama. The best map is Bryan Conant’s 2015 “San Rafael Wilderness Backcountry Guide.”
— 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.