Educated Guesswork

Hiking the Miller Canyon/Pine Valley Loop

Lisa and I spent the weekend in Los Padres National Forest again.

Driving distance	150 miles (each way)
Walking distance	23 miles (loop)
Max altitude	4757 feet (from TopoUSA)
Total climbing	7089 feet (Lisa says "Aargh!")
Scenery rating	9 (high meadow, river valley)
Mosquito rating	3
Weather	Cool and mostly shaded, rainy on day 3
Water availability	Yes. You're along a river most of the time
Special hazards	Some trails hard to follow
Cost	Zero! (the USFS has waived the adventure pass)
Permits required	Campfire permit

Lisa and I left Palo Alto about 10 AM and arrived at the China Camp campground and trailhead about 2:30 and were on the trail by 3. Warning: the last 5 or so miles of Tassajara Road on the way to China Camp are a seriously rutted and potholed dirt road. We were able to make it ok in Lisa's aspire, but a high clearance vehicle with a better suspension would be nice here.

The first mile and half of the route is a road descending from 4300 feet to about 3600 feet. I haven't quite figured out how to make TopoUSA route over both road and trail, so just trust me that it's the gray line from the red dot (labaled Tassajara Rd) to the black dot labelled Start.

We descended the rest of the first day and made camp at the Clover Basin camp (the first marker on the profile), which is a small campsite looking over a stream. There are two difficult bits here. The first is that Nason's Cabin is supposed to be located at a saddle point about 4 miles in. All we saw was a fence in a field with two paths going out of it. We followed the wrong trail for a while before Lisa worked out what the right one was. Towards the end of the day you join up with the river and there are some tricky bits following it. Clover Basin camp is generally pretty nice, but someone had left a whole bunch of old clothes and stuff at the site. Pack out your crap, people!

The second day follows a series of creeks and streams almost the entire way. There are about 25 stream crossings, so if you plan on hiking this route bring waterproof boots. I had waxed my boots just prior to leaving so my feet stayed pretty dry. It was sometime around the fifth stream crossing that the sole of my boot (recently resoled!) decided to separate from the boot proper. I ended up having to make an emergency repair with a nylon strap, which worked fine after a little trial and error:

The second half of the day we hiked up to Pine Valley, which is located on a high meadow. The trail starts to get pretty overgrown here and we had to beat our way through a bunch of brush, which made for slow going. We camped in what looked like a slightly ad hoc campground (the second marker in the profile) right in a stand of pines in the center of the meadow. The view was beautiful (or so Lisa tells me) but by 7:00 it had started to get really cold and windy so we ended up eating dinner all bundled up and turning in at 8:00 or so.

We were up early the next morning for the hike out and were about halfway through breaking camp when we felt the first drops of rain. We rushed through packing the tent and had only made it about a half mile before it was seriously coming down. We were actually pretty prepared for the rain since we had pack covers, waterproof jackets, and warm clothes, but since the next 2.5 miles or so consisted of pushing our way through wet brush, so by the time we got to the first summit we were pretty much completely soaked anyway. After another two miles of that we were definitely ready to put on some dry clothes and sit in a heated car.

Posted by ekr at September 20, 2004 09:26 PM | TrackBack