Stewardship, access, good fire, and justice -- for all these reasons, at this point the Ventana would be far better off in the hands of native tribes than in those of the US Forest Service.

I didn't always feel that way, but I sure do now.

This bridge will never, EVER be rebuilt. There is neither the money nor the political will to rebuild forest infrastructure once it is damaged or destroyed. And even if there were, the project would be buried in EIRs and EISs for the next ten years. The history of the Los Padres over the past 25 yea...

The L.A. Times just came out with an excellent piece on the impacts of compressed fire return intervals on the Southern Los Padres: more grassland, less chaparral, fewer trees, fewer steelhead. The Kirk Complex / Basin Complex / Soberanes triad is almost directly analogous to what most of the Southe...

Date Hiked: May 22, 2016 General Condition: Passable (some brush and/or deadfalls, tread evident) Look, everybody knows this is Wilderness Freeway from Big Sur to Sykes. But beyond Sykes, you had better be prepared for some tough slogging. Sykes to Redwood Camp is passable, with lots of slump and e...

How exciting! There's a good chance you'll be one of the very first backpacking parties in either area since the recent storms, so please be sure to report back on what you find up there. If you opt for lovely Skinner Ridge & VDC, I suspect you're going to run into some serious blowdowns in the ...

Date Hiked: May 27, 2012 General Condition: Difficult (brushy and/or many deadfalls, faint tread) Though there are certainly many stretches of clear and passable conditions along the Big Sur Trail, and though its tread is generally quite stable except for a few loose patches on the ridge between th...

It breaks my heart to hear that this trail is now officially "lost". I'll never forget doing it as a shuttle dayhike -- Bottchers Gap to Pfeiffer -- with two college buddies one long, lovely day in April, 1997. It really wasn't all that bad back then, and it took us a little over 12 hours ...

Lovers of the Los Padres should cast a wary eye on this piece of legislation. Republican Congressman Elton Gallegly has spent most of his 20+ year lackluster congressional career earning zeroes from the League of Conservation Voters, but now that he has been re-districted out of his safe seat in sub...

That’s a plausible speculation about Gallegly’s motives, mikesplain. I’m crossing my fingers that you may be right. I guess I always felt a little more at ease when a wilderness proposal was coming out of Panetta’s or Farr’s office than this guy’s. Given what little information has been made availab...

I, too, have never seen (or heard) them in the Ventana. The biggest rooting-around area I ever came across, though, was a couple miles out of the Chaparral Ranger Station on the "North Wilderness Trail" in the Pinnacles. If you want to see them safely, you might consider a ride on the Coas...