Dude Outing

One of the reasons for my trip to California was to inagurate a semi-annual backpacking trip that I do with my guy friends. For this permutation, we chose something in central California, near Santa Barbara. Originally, I was hoping to get many folks to come along, but they dropped like flies as the date approached.  In the end, it was just Alex, Jeff, Chris and myself. We had a blast, we did some good hiking, Will got poison oak, everybody got scratched by mean bushes... but the trip was a success.

 Here is one of the (many) river crossings on the first day. Chris with the turban

 Our first campsite. Nice view, sandy floor under our backs... pretty ideal

3/4 of the crew under appropriately named 'arch rock'. L-R Alex, Jeff, and Chris. This was the happy part of the day 2.

Can you spot the trail? Didn't think so. We hiked half a day through scratchy scrub oak and manzanita on our way up the mountain. It looked more or less like the foreground below, due to the lack of trail maintenance in recent years (decades?)

Day 3: Almost to the top of the pass. Evidence of a fire from a few years ago. Notice that the trail crew had reached this part of the trail (what a difference!). Jeff posing.

View from the pass. Handsome devil not included.

The gang's all here! On our successful summit of Sespe pass.

A cool looking tree on the way down to the trailhead. We stashed cars at either end, so the hike was a point to point rather than an out and back. There was still quite a bit of snow in the shadows even though the temp was above 70F during the day. It was fun to throw snowballs at Jeff on the way down the mountain!

Anyway, the trip was a good one. I'm looking forward to the next installment already!