A local family enjoys a hike on one off the newly-reopened Cold Spring trails. 
Saturday, December 16 in the early morning, homes in the Montecito area came under direct attack from fire being whipped by strong downhill winds. At the time it appeared that many homes would burn but thanks to a massive response by fire fighters, only a few were destroyed. 
Closeup view of the iconic white two-story home that sits across Mountain Drive from the Cold Spring trailhead. The home barely escaped destruction duing the Thomas Fire but was seriously damaged during the mud flow. 
Two fire fighters use drip torches to initiate a burn out from the edge of East Camino Cielo to prevent the fire from reaching the crest. 
Intense flames from the burn out create massive flames that burn the majority of the upper Cold Spring watershed. 
Strong down canyon winds push flames downhill, away from the crest, into the lower part of the Cold Spring watershed. 
Though Gibraltar Road was threatened briefly, when fire fighters were able to hold the flames from crossing the road, marking a turning point in containing the fire. 
Steve Oaks, then Division Chief for Santa Barbara County Fire, surveys the damage to the watersheds a few days after the threat to Santa Barbara from the Thomas Fire has been contained. 
Ron Noe accompanies me on an exploratory trip up the East Fork of Cold Spring Canyon to assess the trail damage. The majority of the trails in the canyon were seriously damaged by the mud flow. 
A huge chunk of a structure is caught in a large oak along Montecito Creek, just below the bridge on Highway 192 at Parra Grande. 
A badly damaged home on the east bank of Montecito Creek that fronts Parra Grande. The lower part of the home has been gutted completely by the mudflow when it overflows the creek banks. 
Crushed Porsche along the west side of Montecito Creek just below the Highway 192 bridge and just above the house in the tree. 
Mountain Drive just above the Cold Spring debris dama few hours after the mud flow. 
View from the Cold Spring trailhead of the damage done by the mudflow, which washed away the cement creek crossing and destroyed everything in the canyon, including the riparian vegetation 20-30’ up the canyon walls. 
The white two-story home near the Cold Spring trailhead barely escapes from being completely destroyed and washed downstream. This home came close to burning down just a month earlier on Black Saturday. 
View through the trees from the west side of Cold Spring Creek of the incredible destruction done to the canyon just a few hours earlier. 
Closer up view of the damage from the west side of the canyon showing the complete washout of the trailhead entry, making it impossible to access the canyon on the east side. 
View from the bench at the West Fork intersection prior to the debris flow on January 9, 2018. 
Ron Noe reflecting on the incredible damage where the east and west forks of Cold Springs merge a few days after the debris flow. 
Hikers enjoy the quiet beauty of Cold Spring two years after the canyon vegetation was completely obliterated by the debris flow. 
Hikers pass one another this past weekend as they explore the newly-opened Cold Spring trails.
Earlier this month, the Cold Spring canyon trails were officially re-opened to the public, the last of the front country trails seriously damaged during the Montecito debris flows.
While past events such as the 2005 January floods have caused serious damage to these trails, the impacts to Cold Spring Canyon were of an order unprecedented in many of our lifetimes.
As a result we may not see a recovery to a semblance of the character that has caused many of us to label it as the “jewel” of the front country trails for many years or decades, if ever.
The damage to Cold Spring Canyon was not the result of any one event, but a series of cascading events beginning with the start of the Thomas Fire on Dec. 4, 2017, and ending with the debris flow on Jan. 9, 2018. This is a recounting of those events.
Montecito Threatened by Fire
When I reach the intersection of Cold Springs Road and Mountain Drive at 9 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, the wind is howling. The air is filled with thick clouds of smoke, billowing overhead, threatening to overwhelm the fire resources stationed nearby.
Down in Cold Spring Canyon, the trees begin to burn, and nearby a large, white two-story home adjacent to the Cold Spring trailhead is surrounded by fire. Two engine crews work feverishly to keep the flames from spreading into the house, dousing it with gallons of water.
The feeling is ominous. After days of the fire creeping through the upper parts of Toro, Romero and San Ysidro canyons and into Cold Spring Canyon, the battle is on. Hundreds of homes in the Montecito foothills are in peril.
Estimates are that as many as 300-400 engines and 1,500-2,000 firefighters are in place and ready to meet the challenge, with at least one of the engine crew stationed at almost every one of the Montecito homes.
Race For Containment
Above, near the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains, another drama is playing out. The fear is that should the winds calm in the later afternoon, the fire will turn back uphill and breach containment lines set up along East Camino Cielo.
This could push the fire into the backcountry and possibly west across Gibraltar Road. Should this happen the Flores Flat community will be directly in harms’s way.
Santa Barbara itself may then be in peril as well.
To date, the Thomas Fire has burned for 13 days, moved west over 40 air miles from its origin near Santa Paula to this Saturday morning when the hills above Montecito are on fire. Hundreds of homes have already been destroyed along the way, and enough brush has burned that this is rapidly becoming California’s largest wildfire to date.
The thought of the fire continuing its march west is unthinkable.
While the firefighters below are spraying thousands of gallons of foam-laced water on homes throughout the Montecito area, dozens of others equipped with drip torches and pistols design to shoot burning projectiles are beginning to burn out the vegetation on the coast side of East Camino Cielo.
For several hours, the fires created by the burn out slowly make their way downhill towards Santa Barbara, eating up hundreds of acres of chaparral and creating a swath of fire-blackened hillsides.
By 4 p.m., the majority of the upper front country drainages have been burned out. With containment along East Camino and Gibraltar holding and after a brief flareup near Gibraltar Road is choked off, it appears the Thomas Fire will no longer threaten the Sound Coast area.
The Ugly Aftermath
A few days later, with “Black Saturday” behind us, I venture back up to the crest to assess the damage. What is left now is what I suspected I would see: charred hillsides stretching from Camino Cielo down into the deepest recesses of Cold Spring Canyon, with little plant life left save tiny islands of chaparral the fast-moving flames have passed over.
The drive along Camino Cielo continues to be disheartening. Hot Spring, San Ysidro and Romero are equally burned out. The quiet is unnerving. There are no song birds to sing; no gentle breeze to rustle through the leaves; no grasses blowing in the wind.
Scree-Filled Trails
I stop and hike down a bit of the upper Cold Spring Trail, then the San Ysidro and finally a section of a short connector I call Paul’s Trail, for the work he and others have done to open up an overgrown section of old road, one George Owen Knapp paid to build before being abandoned in later years.
All of the trails are filled with scree. Within days after the fire has passed, gravity is at play, bringing loose rock and gravel down, covering the tread, making them impossible to use.
This may only be the start of the problem: upcoming winter storms may cause even more damage, and the Los Padres Forest has only meager resources to offer when disasters like this occur.
I’m wondering how long it will be before the community will be able to enjoy them once again.
Not thinking, of course, that some incredible force of nature might occur to cause even more damage, let alone the type of catastrophic flooding that would occur less than a month later.
A Tuesday Unlike Any Other
There are few days that a person can mark as turning points in one’s life. Mostly, if anything, those are personal moments: births, deaths, marriages and divorces. Rarely ones that impact an entire community.
Tuesday, Jan. 9, was one of those days.
Just after 3 a.m., the night dark, the day barely beginning, a microburst begins to take form over the hills above Montecito, The wrong time and the wrong place.
Within minutes, millions of gallons of water are cascading down over the denuded hillsides, collecting ash, saturating the soil and beginning to form a deadly mix, something like a cement slurry, heavy enough to start moving nearby rocks downhill, cause massive hillside failures, and fill the canyons with a kinetic energy that would inundate the Montecito community.
The Search for Victims
By 3:45 a.m., less than a half hour after the microburst begins, Nelson Trichler and the Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue Team — who had spent the night at QAD in anticipation of storm damage from the incoming storm — were in full rescue mode.
Deluged with mud, a family of five along Romero Creek has retreated to their attic in a frantic attempt to escape the mud.
Elsewhere along Olive Mill and Hot Springs roads, what had been a search for victims was quickly turning into a nightmare operation, with the discovery of numerous bodies. The impossible is now unfolding.
Working My Way Through a Disaster Zone
I’d reached Olive Mill road just after 9 a.m., working my way through a series of road blocks on Highway 101 to the Olive Mill exit. The scene was chaotic, with large boulders covering the railroad tracks, mud and rock filling the side streets below the freeway, and a jumble of rock, mud, downed telephone poles and other debris blocking Olive Mill.
At one point, I wait for what seems like an eternity while a huge bulldozer shoves a handful of vehicles pinned against the chain link fence out of the way, enabling the operator to rip the fencing down and create an opening to allow the mud flowing down Santa Isabel Lane to continue down onto the freeway rather than the frontage road.
Eventually, I’m able to make my way east to San Ysidro Road and up to the upper Village. I turn right onto East Valley Road but find the road blocked by debris as I near Randall Road and the San Ysidro Creek crossing. I retreat back and head west past Mount Carmel Church to get a sense of what conditions are like in the upper part of the Cold Spring drainages.
The damage I’m looking at is unbelievable.
Just above the bridge on the 192 near Parra Grande, Montecito Creek has risen high enough to rip out a whole section of a beautiful white cottage on the east side of the creek. Below and on the other side of the bridge, large trees and boulders have flattened several homes.
Just around the corner, I spot a classic blue Porsche crushed by rocks that have forced it upward against the top of the garage.
Then the unimaginable: 10 feet off the ground, wedged into the crook of a huge oak tree, is a chunk of a house, the rest of it nowhere to be seen.
A Slog Up to Cold Spring Canyon
I’m stunned by what I am seeing. Montecito Creek has turned from a quiet foothill creek into a raging giant.
Given what I’m witnessing here, I’m wondering what the impacts might be further up the drainages. There are beautiful homes just upstream along Ashley Road, many of them close enough to the creek to be in harm’s way.
For the first time, I’m also wondering what the impacts might be even further upstream along Cold Spring Creek, one of Montecito Creek’s largest watersheds.
When I wrote the first edition of my Santa Barbara Day Hikes book, and after evaluating all of the front country trails, for me the Cold Spring East Fork Trail was jewel of them all, describing it thusly:
“This is absolutely my very favorite trail. Within a few yards of your car, the pools begin. Deep and shaded by alders, the perennial creek offers scores of places to spend an afternoon.
“Even the name suggests something special. Cold Springs represents the shortest distance you can travel to get the furthest away from Santa Barbara. Above the trailhead you will find bedrock pools and places to sunbathe, incredible coastal views and a route to the mountain crest.
“The canyon beauty begins at the road’s edge. Alders thickly covered with green leaves flutter in the breeze. Twenty yards upstream are the first pools.
“Even if you only have an hour, this is a place where you can enjoy a few precious minutes of quiet. With the canyon walls and alder boughs for privacy, sandstone boulders for resting spots, and the creek’s incessant babble for companionship, you’ll fall in love with it, too.
As I drive up Parra Grande Lane towards Mountain Drive I begin to get nervous about what I might find. At this point it is about 11 a.m., just eight hours after the mudflow began, and I’m not sure what I’m going to find.
I’m forced to stop just before I reach the debris basin about a quarter mile below the Cold Spring trailhead when the mud and debris on the road make Mountain Drive impassable.
At places, the mud is deep enough to cover my boots so I’m forced to create a zig-zag route up the road to avoid the worst of it. I pass a few county firefighters who are checking nearby homes. The basin is completely filled with boulders, high enough that the basin no longer serves a purpose. The creek bed has been scoured clean but it is difficult to assess what the damage might be like up ahead.
The biggest clue is the amount of mud and rock that covers the road; in places the mudflow would have had to be 20-30 feet deep to reach the locations I’m now walking through.
A second clue occurs 15 minutes later when I get close to the overflow parking area just below where a locked gate is now located. Up high on the other side of the creek is the iconic white two story house I‘d been at photographing the engine crews saving it from being destroyed by the Thomas Fire.
Though at least 30 feel elevation from the creek bed below it, the lower left side of it had been torn away. I’m aghast that something that far above the creek has come within inches of being completely swept away.
It’s Gone; It’s All Gone
Three minutes later, I’m at the edge of the Cold Spring road crossing looking up the creek. Most of the crossing has been washed away, and from my position all I can see is the negative.
There are no alders thickly covered with green leaves fluttering in the breeze. No canyon beauty at the road’s edge; no quiet place to spend a few precious moments or immerse oneself in the creek’s incessant babble.
From what I can see, the trail is gone as well. I make my way across the creek and up what had been the road leading up towards Cold Spring Road and Westmont College.
Mud, pools of water and downed trees make it difficult to get a clear look at the damage, but finally I get to a point where I’m looking straight down at the white house. The view takes my breath away; the driveway to it is completely gone.
Finding a spot through the eucalyptus trees scattered along the road where I have an open view of the canyon, I’m blown away once again. My first thought is that the canyon’s gone. But that isn’t quite right.
What is completely gone is the riparian corridor that has always made Cold Spring Canyon so special to me. The Cold Spring character I’d known my entire life here in Santa Barbara is no longer there.
The Healing Begins
My first venture up Cold Spring is a week later with friend Ron Noe. I’d asked him to join me because he knows the area well, and also I really didn’t feel safe going alone. While the goal is a pragmatic one — reporting back for a story on trail conditions and sharing that information with the public — it was a personal one as well.
The first thing that hits both of us when we reach the West Fork Trail intersection is that the bench is gone. The second was that the waterfall and pools are as well. Both have been essential parts of what I’ve loved about Cold Spring Canyon.
Ron works has way down into the rock jumble and stands in the middle of the confluence of the two forks of Cold Spring. We’ve both reached reflection points: a time to take a few minutes to ponder what we’ve lost; how we’ll ever overcome what our canyon has become; and what its future will hold.
We scramble up the canyon, sometimes on the trail; others heading straight up canyon. The hike is tough and a bit scary, particularly as we loop back down via the Ridge Trail.
Without vegetation below us, the hillsides are steep enough to guarantee almost certain death should we slip or take a fall.
As we reach the bottom of the trail, I breathe out a sigh of relief. On one level, though it may take a year or two, the damage is not irreparable. With enough time, volunteers and dollars, they will be rebuilt.
One another, though, I’m not sure how long it will take for the the memories of what we’ve lost to pass.
Getting Back to Normal
It has been two years now since the Montecito Debris Flow wreaked havoc on the community, and the sense that things are getting back to normal is palpable.
The vegetation is growing back; the riparian corridors are looking much healthier; the trail community has stepped up to make the trails accessible; and people are using them in record numbers.
Last weekend, I spent the afternoon in the canyon to see how things looked and enjoy a beautiful sunny winter day there.
What a day, except perhaps for the parking. There are enough vehicles that I’m forced to park close to the Cold Spring debris basin, not too far from the spot where I’d hiked up the day of the debris flow.
The road is now clear. The white house perched above the creek has been repaired. The canyon is now taking on the colors of spring.
To my joy, the new stone wall near the trailhead shines brightly in the sun, a symbol not only of the thousands of hours of volunteer time put into restoring the Cold Spring trails, but a symbol of the rebirth of what I still believe is the jewel of the front country trails.
Most of all, and despite the heartbreak the past two years has caused, we’ve got our canyon back. And I’m thankful for that.
Measuring in Canyon Time
What will take a bit longer than a reopening of the trails is to see how the canyon itself heals. Nature is a slow healer, and what returns is not always what was there before.
Here’s to the thought that one day there will come a time once again when alders and the sycamores rule Cold Spring Canyon, when the water burbles, and the green leaves flutter in the breeze.
— Noozhawk outdoors writer Ray Ford can be reached at rford@noozhawk.com. Click here for his website, SBoutdoors.com. Follow him on Twitter: @riveray. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
