On the Record

The Los Padres Crew Nicholas Schou is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of several books, including Orange Sunshine and Kill the Messenger, his writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and other fine publications. If you have tips or stories about Montecito, please email him at newseditor@montecitojournal.net.

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ON THE RECORD Page 224 A bout four miles and 3,500 vertical feet uphill from the San Ysidro Trailhead, a Los Padres Forest Association (LPFA) work crew wearing hardhats printed in block letters with their names, are wielding hand hoes. They’re fixing a somewhat crumbling ridge dotted with small bushes and the scorched skeletons of small trees that burned in the canyon-hopping December 2017 Thomas Fire.

The LFPA crew is led by Jason Morris and Daniel Smith, and includes John Nagy, Brayson Ogan, Silas Kok, Tyler Chard, and Leo Herrera. They all hail from either Santa Barbara or Lompoc, and earlier that morning, they’d hiked about a mile south down the hill from the nearest road, El Camino Cielo. Many of them are backpackers with a decade or more experience camping out for days or week at a time.

Every 25 feet or so, the crew has carved out downhill drainage funnels. The steep, upper stretch of the trail is the last remaining obstacle to restoring Montecito’s entire network of trails, much of which was wiped out by the fire and subsequent 1/9/18 debris flow. The men are accompanied by a pair of friendly dogs that patrol the hillside. Sometimes, while restoring the San Yisdro Trail, they prefer to camp overnight for a couple of days at a time, either for the fun of it or because it’s too exhausting to hike out and make the long drive home.

“I love it out here,” Chard, an aspiring firefighter, tells me. “Sometimes I don’t really want to be around other people all that much,” he adds, grinning at the fog-covered green mountainsides all around us. Going up the Mountain To reach the LPFA crew, I meet Ashlee Mayfield, president of the Montecito Trails Foundation, at the San Ysidro Trailhead off Park Lane and just east of the San Ysidro Ranch. As we begin our hike at 10 am, Mayfield warns another pair of hikers about the dangerous trail conditions higher up. They thank her for the advice and take a different trail. At first, it’s an easy stride through an oak grove, then a gentle, tree-covered path takes us alongside a small creek which terminates in the gently sloping bowl of the San Ysidro debris basin.

It’s chilly, almost cold, with fog obscuring the sky, and peaceful, and at one point, we hear frogs down in the bubbling creek. Yet both sides of the canyon bear violent scars from where the base of the canyon began slipping southwards at a depth of 25 to 30 feet thanks to an unprecedented combination of fire and rain. “It used to be lush,” Mayfield tells me of the rock-strewn gulley that remains. “There was a good tree canopy, and creek crossings were mild. The debris flow ripped almost everything out.”

Higher up in the canyon, we pass by the first of a pair of Swiss-made steel debris nets that were installed in San Ysidro Canyon last year with funding from Montecito’s Project for Resilient Communities (TPRC). Both nets stretch across narrow reaches of the canyon, chokepoints for any rocks or debris flowing downhill.

Beyond the San Ysidro Falls – at this time of year just a trickle – Mayfield and I ascend a steep series of switchbacks. The views – of the Pacific Ocean to the south and Montecito Peak to the west – are stunning. Yet the climb is difficult, especially when the trail completely disappears. On several occasions, we have no choice but to scurry across slopes that had been eroded or overrun by sliding rock.

The difficult terrain underscores the efforts of the LPFA crew,” Mayfield tells me. “The crews working the trail are incredibly hard working, fit, nature-loving individuals that really care about our environment and access. It’s great to see people who love what they are doing and who are appreciated, especially by trail runners who have a great appreciation for what they do as trail builders.” A Legacy of Fire

Long before the Spaniards explored the area a few centuries earlier and then finally founding the Santa Barbara Presidio in 1872, most of the trails that make up Montecito’s rugged front country were Chumash routes. “Before that, they were animal trails,” says Bryan Conant, a LPFA trail clearing supervisor. “Some of the trails were built by the U.S. Forestry Service in the 1920s, like the Franklin Trail. They took the path of least resistance, the quickest route to the top.” “Back then, the objective of the trail was to get to the top as quickly as possible,” Conant continues. “A lot of the users were on horseback and in the last fifty years it’s turned from A rock bears evidence of the 1/9/18 debris flow Ashlee Mayfield checks out one of two debris nets along San Ysidro Creek

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