Pics From My Recent Trip to Carrizo Plains

I recently joined Ben from Overland Trail Guides, and a few others on a trip through the Ynez Mountains and into Carrizo Plains. Our mission was to create a new overland route for Ben's website and to get us Trail Ambassadors some real world experience leading a group off-road.

Ben has summed up the trip much better than I can. Here's his recap:

Okay, okay, I haven't fully settled on the name, but it's likely to end up with some variation of that. This past week, I led an amazing group of folks from Santa Barbara, cutting through the coastal mountains and out to Carrizo Plain. It was a larger group, as we had 4 Trail Ambassadors out with us to get them some real world experience. If there's a phrase that sums up this trip, it's "View, view, views." Immediately climbing into the mountains above Santa Barbara the views of the coastline 4,000' below are absolutely mind boggling. We made stops at viewpoints, Lizard's Mouth Rock, and a fire lookout.

My original reserach indicated that we'd likely be able to drive down the dirt via North Refugio Road. Well, a couple of road closure signs indicated that likely wouldn't be the case. But I decided to investigate and made it down a couple miles down the trail with one of the other guys to do some scouting. And sure enough, there was a washout that was pretty dang sketchy. It likely would've left about 6" of space between my tire and the edge of the washout-- not safe! I got a radio call from the group up top that said a kid (in his 20s) was on his way down on a moto. He said he was going to ride the entire trail and would ride to the bottom and come back up just to let us know what sort of condition the road was in. About 10 minutes later (after an incredibly sketchy 10 pt turn to right my rig uphill) he was back, and said there were even bigger washouts down the way that would likely be impassable. Fair enough, we'd already made the decision to skip Refugio Road. Unfortunately, that meant we had to drop down to highway 1 and take the long way around back to the Solvang area and burn the pavement to Figueroa mountain.

It turned out being a bit of a haul, as one of the lanes along highway 1 was closed for construction. Even though we were burning nearly all pavement, the drive through Santa Ynez valley and up Figueroa Mountain was absolutely spectacular. The lupine blanketed the grassy green mountain slopes, especially in burn zones from the 2024 Lake Fire which burned nearly 40k acres on Figueroa mountain and the surrounding area. Finally we made it to a spot I'd marked for dispersed camping, and there was a giant RV with a roving dog protecting camp. A man in his mid 30s emerged and approached some of the rigs in our group. Turns out he was carrying a pistol in a chest holster which he proudly displayed. I don't recall the exact exchange of words, but the people in our group who spoke with him said he wasn't too friendly. If I was camping solo, I probably would have vacated the area given the weird vibes our neighbor was giving off, but we had 8 rigs with us. So we found a nice spot out of sight just around the corner from him that had a nice view of the setting sun over the coastal ranges.

The next day we'd head high up into the coastal ranges in the Los Padres National Forest via Sierra Madre Road (SMR). SMR starts off as a nice, wide graded dirt road. But as it climbs higher and higher, the road narrows and takes on a much more rugged nature. Expect lots of pinstripes, and if you're in a full size rig like me, you'll probably be using 4-low to regulate your speed while bounding over the rocks and ruts. But man, those viiiiiiiieeeeewwwws, they really are something else! By the time we reached Bates Canyon Road, it was past 3:00, and it was looking like our plans to reach McPherson (another dozen miles down the road that required doubling back to Bates Canyon) was out of the question. After some quick deliberations, we decided it'd be best to skip McPherson and drop down Bates Canyon. The descent was steep, narrow, and with a fair amount of loose rocks. In the distance we could see the barren ridges where Carrizo Plain lies just east of.

We finally reached the valley floor and made a beeline to New Cuyama for fuel and provisions. After refueling we made the 6 mile drive to a nearby campground in the national forest. The camp was set amongst a grove of mature oak trees, and we only had a couple of neighbors for the night. And the sites were pretty darn big as well, plenty of space for our group of 8.

Our finaly day would find us heading into Carrizo Plain National Monument. As we continued our march eastward, the hills became less and less green. In fact, most of Carrizo was pretty darn brown. Yup-- definitely no super bloom this year! In fact, the lupine blooms up on Figueroa Mountain were way more impressive than anything we came across out at Carrizo. Well, Carrizo turned out to a lot of fun, especially when you get up into the trails that go into the hills. Explored the hills towards the eastern entrance before making our way out to the viewpoint above Soda Lake. Out by the coast the weather had consistently been in the low 60s, but now we were approaching 80F, and without a tree in site. The short walk to the viewpoint from the parking lot definitely had us sweating! After Soda Lake, it was off to Tremblor Ridge.

The trail up to the ridge was steep, requiring 1st gear in 4-low for many of our rigs. And the trail up top the ridge was narrow, loose, and plenty of exposure and ton of steep sections-- but it was also a lot of fun. This would be slow going though, and looking that it was already past 3pm, there was no way we were going to complete the 15+ miles along the ridge as that'd likely take at least a couple of hours at the pace we were going. I'd spotted an escape route down the ridge, but it looked like it'd hardly been used in the last couple of years as it descended down a rather narrow and precarious looking ridge. We decided that Mark's Gladiator would be best suited for scouting the line. And sure enough, about 1/2 mile down the spine of the ridge, he said things got super steep and hairy-- a loos 25 degree fall line that was only about 10' wide. Mark and his passenger Tony both expressed their concern that it could be a perilous situation if one of the full size trucks were to lose traction and begin sliding off the side of the trail, a very real possibility given how soft and loose the trail was. So we opted for the safe route, turning around and backtracking the 3 or so miles that we'd come up.

Earlier in the day we'd found an amazing overlook, with a picnic bench and shade structure that we intended to call our camp. In fact, we left a variety of chairs, tables, and blankets during our lunch stop to "secure" the camp. We knew the camp was privately owned as indicated on a sign (but open to the public when unused), what we didn't know is that it was a reservable campsite on HipCamp. And upon our return, a couple sadly informed us that they'd reserved it for the night. I apologized for the confusion, and we found a camp 300 yards down the road with nice view of the plain below us and the setting sun to the west. We settled in for one last amazing night along the central coast. But still not having witness a major bloom in Carrizo, it looks like I'll be back at some point in the future!

A big thank you to everyone who joined on this trip >> Mark, Tony, Huffy, Meng, Audrey, Bob, Robin, Doug, Randy, Sarah and Dustin!

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for the great trip report and pictures RH.

What a beautiful country, really enjoyed the pics D!  Those other rigs make the 4Runner look small