If there’s one place to visit that is close to the center of Santa Barbara County, it’s the tip top of San Rafael Mountain in Los Padres National Forest.

At 6,593 feet high, it sits well above the surrounding landscape. 

On a clear day in the cooler late fall, winter and springtime, you can catch a glimpse of the rounded top of Mount Piños, a whopping 40 air miles to the northeast. And on a really, really, really clear day, the snow-covered peaks in the Southern Sierra.

The catch — getting to the top of the mountain is not so easy.

Packing in by Moonlight

I’ve found the perfect way to deal with this.

It’s better than the traditional way of driving in early in the day and suffering the seemingly forever hike up the jeepway to McKinley Saddle — which involves seven miles of dusty dirt road, 3,000-plus feet elevation gain, hot, sweaty hiking and minuscule amounts of shade — and that’s before you ever reach single-track trail.

The secret: We begin the trek an hour or so before the sun goes down and hike the steepest section by moonlight.

There’s something magical about hiking by moonlight. It’s not something that is suited to most trips into the backcountry, where the trails are often rough, steep and include creek crossings or elevations where doing so would be dangerous.

But the hike to the Mission Pines with an overnight at the springs is perfect for this.

The jeepway winds its way north and east around the upper flanks of Cachuma Peak, where views of the greater part of the San Rafael Wilderness come into view, with the upper part of Manzana Creek immediately below, the sharp-edged Hurricane Deck in the middle ground and in the distance the Sierra Madre Mountains.

Cool Breezes and Steady Hiking

Though the grade is unrelenting, there’s a cool breeze, the sound of what might have been a red-tailed hawk cruising by and the deep blue skies that come with the setting sun.

Many of the kids are along for the adventure, which consists of three full days using Mission Pine Springs as our base camp and exploring outward from there.

This is not an easy hike for many of the them. They range from ninth-graders to Dos Pueblos High seniors, some with lots of outdoor experiences and others with little.

But by leaving in the evening and bypassing the hotter mid-day temps, we’ve lessened the burden quite a bit. There’s also knowing that while our goal is McKinley Springs, we can stop most anywhere along the jeepway and bed down for the night.

On this particular trip, we have a special guest: one of my students named Wynne has invited along her mom, Karen. She’s never backpacked before, so it’s my students’ job to help her along the way as well.

For many of the kids, it’s their first big backpack trip into the depths of the backcountry, so one of our key responsibilities will be to help each other when the going gets tough.

Halfway at Hell’s Half Acre

Our first goal for the night is a relatively easy one, a spot that for no reason I can work out is called Hell’s Half Acre. It’s basically a saddle separating Cachuma Mountain behind us from McKinley Mountain ahead.

It’s about five miles up the jeepway to this point, and this has been our stopping point for the night on other trips.

We gather together to get a sense of how we’re all doing. I check with Wynne, and it appears her mom is still game to continue on. Everyone is tired, but the general sense is we’re not ready to stop yet. So we head out — that sense of adventure pushing us onward.

McKinley Springs or Bust

I’ve held back one small detail about the next mile or so ahead of us that I’m sure would have persuaded some to stop here. But I know in the morning they’ll be thankful they didn’t stop at Hells Half Acre for the night.

Ahead of us the road drops steeply down to another smaller and narrower saddle and just beyond climbs steeply uphill up one of the worst sections of jeepway in Los Padres Forest. The saddle is a beautiful spot, or might have been if a recent wildfire hadn’t burned the tall stand of Douglas firs along it.

When we reach the saddle and the climb begins, I hear some grumbling but we forge on. I encourage them to go slow, take measured steps with a small break between each of them and to stay within one’s breath.

I always lead from the back end of the group, partly so I can see how my students are doing ahead of me and also to encourage those who aren’t doing so well.

Toughing it Out

It’s a tough quarter mile to the point where the jeepway levels out to a more gentle grade. In another half mile we’re at McKinley Springs Camp, though it’s hard to call it a camp given it consists basically of a 20-by-40-foot area cleared out years ago by a bulldozer.

But it’s golden tonight. Despite its location on the upper slopes of what appears to be dry, dusty mountaintop, it has a most precious resource: spring water.

I’m not sure where the source is located, but there is a pipe system that brings the water down to a tank and from there into a water trough. It’s a lifesaver for those heading on to Mission Pine Springs.

Morning Light, Mountaintop Panos

We’re on the road again early. Ahead of us another mile along the jeepway to McKinley Saddle and a second mile up to the top of San Rafael Mountain. It’s starting to get warm, but everyone in the group is excited, both to reach the top and have the climbing behind them.

When we reach the peak, which is officially 6,593 feet tall, there’s a certain disappointment. There’s nothing particularly spectacular to be found — just a small jumble of rocks, a relatively small mound-like top edged with chaparral, and a weather-beaten red can housing a tattered journal.

But then they begin to look around. The panos are outstanding. Here we are in the middle of what might be called nowhere, and we’re surrounded with views of everywhere.

“I’m so proud of you,” I hear Wynne say to her mom.

I’m proud as well too for all those who’ve made the effort to get to this point. There is a sense of accomplishment but also something more.

There is excitement in the air. No matter which direction they turn, there is the sense of being surrounded by rugged mountainous country, whichever way they look.

There’s both a realization they’ve done something special in getting here, but also the sense of adventure that is waiting for them in the Mission Pine forests they’ve heard so much about.

Over the past few months we’ve spent time exploring much of the front country from the lower foothill trails to the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains via the Cold Springs Trail. I’ve shared with them those incredible views out into the backcountry and stoked the desire to explore that area sometime soon.

But now we’re here, on the top of the mountain, and it’s just dawning on them that it’s quite another thing when you’re finally up here smack dab in the middle of it.

Class is in Session

I can tell from the comments I’m hearing that they’re having difficulty fitting this new reality into the world they’ve grown up in.

Immediately below us to the south is Lake Cachuma. At some level they understand that a good amount of the water we use in the Santa Barbara area comes from this reservoir.

But they’re having a tough time working out where that water comes from. The question is a classic one. If there is one basic necessity that everyone who lives in Santa Barbara needs, it is water. Yet it is one thing that is almost always taken for granted.

“Right below us,” I say, pointing down into what I explain is the Santa Cruz Creek watershed. Looking counter-clockwise, I point to the far distance, to the Indian Creek, the Mono and the upper Santa Ynez River watersheds.

There’s a dawning realization that this jumble of backcountry land has a value well beyond that of a hike, a bike ride, a family outing, or a backpacking trip.

Later we’ll talk more about this and other things I’m sure that will bubble up. But for now it’s time to get back on the trail.

Fantasy World of the Mission Pines

I’m sure that God, if there is one, looked down on the chaparral-covered hillsides and their shades of dull-green vegetation and thought there ought to be at least one place within them that would feel like Heaven.

Perhaps a dozen or so square miles of the most perfectly shaped sandstone, with rich yellow-brown coverings and tall statuesque forest of pine and fir trees, and the sound of the breeze meandering through and just enough openings throughout the manzanita to allow those who come here to wander though at their heart’s content.

If there is one, he would place that just over the crest of San Rafael Mountain so that passage out of the chaparral would be like entering through a gate leading down to a lush tree-shaded camp like that at Mission Pine Springs.

The hike down to the camp is perhaps one of the finest two miles in the backcountry I’ve ever taken.

I don’t say anything to my students as we leave the top of the mountain, and hang back a bit so that they have the opportunity to explore around each corner and experience it for themselves with no filter attached.

Personal Exploration

Given the openness of the camp, it’s possible to spread out enough to have one’s own personal space and more open areas to the south where the pines give way to views across the Santa Ynez Valley and the Channel Islands in the far distance.

We spend two nights here. Thursday we laze about camp and explore the sandstone formations we’ve just walked down through. Friday we follow the Mission Pine Trail further to the east to Mission Pine Basin and back to explore more of the San Rafaels.

More and more the students become immersed in the country.

It’s an 8-mile round trip that takes you up and over a series of gentle ridges filled with even more sandstone wonders and views out toward a set of cliffs known as West Big Pine, where two of the last of the free-range California condors make their home.

The questioning continues. We pass by remnants of a reddish rock known as the Sespe Formation, deposited millions of years ago when marine deposits were first emerging from beneath massive inland seas. It’s a formation that dominates the lower part of the front country trails.

There are other formations as well that I point out that we can also find along the front side of the Santa Ynez Mountains, creating direct connections between these and those in the backcountry.

In a way this forces them to begin a thought process that stretches deeply into our geologic past.

I remind them that when measured against our own historical past, the Chumash tribe may have occupied just 8,000 or so years of that multi-million year past, and our own just a few hundred years of that timespan.

Heading Home

We pack up and head back up the trail in the early afternoon on Saturday, each of us loading up with enough water so that we might enjoy the evening from the top of San Rafael Mountain and from there make our way down past McKinley Springs, refresh our water supplies and make a dry camp at Hell’s Half Acre.

We reach our vehicles just shy of lunchtime on Sunday morning, shed our backpacks and give each other a hug. It’s just one trip, just a few days out in the wilderness, but I’d bet no one’s come back without it having changed them a little.

4-1-1

All of the photos in the story were taken in the middle to late 1970s, with the slides being converted to digital images about 10 years or so ago. They represent a version of the area after the Wellman Fire, which burned a great deal of the San Rafael Wilderness only a year after its designation, crossed over the Hurricane Deck and followed the upper Manzana drainage across the jeepway we walked and burned the Douglas firs in that saddle east of Hell’s Half Acre.

In 2007, the Zaca Fire devastated a great deal of the Mission Pines, although a good deal of the Mission Pine Springs area was spared. The Mission Pine Basin, however, was severely damaged.

Below are a few photos from the post-fire survey I did with Rik Christensen and Paul Cronshaw in fall 2007. I’m hoping to re-visit the area soon.