Hiking in Soberanes Canyon
Aug. 15th, 2021 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerSaturday this weekend we traveled down to California's Central Coast to hike at Garrapata State Park. I wrote about the trip overall in a blog yesterday. Here I follow up with pictures and notes from our hike out & back in Soberanes Canyon.
As I noted in that other blog entry, hiking out & back in Soberanes Canyon was not our first choice. We thought we'd hike up & back Rocky Ridge via the oceanfront trail. Alas that trail is closed from fire damage— still, after a fire that occurred 5 years ago! The fire delivered a one-two punch to many mountainsides as it first burned off all their vegetation then left them susceptible to flash flooding. It's really the floods that occurred a few months after the fires that damaged hiking trails.
Well, the thing about walking in beauty is that beauty can be found all around. Rocky Ridge trail closed? Let's hike Soberanes Canyon instead. It's not the same form of beauty; it's beauty in its own way. In this case, today, with wildflowers all around.
Curiously this lush, full canyon was also once savaged by floods. Well, once within living memory anyway. When we first hiked this trail in the late 1990s there had been flash floods during days of heavy rain a few months earlier. The floor of this canyon with a 50-wide swath of destruction. Plants and bushes were wiped away, small trees were wiped away, even the trail was wiped away. We rock-hopped up the stream bed for a mile.
Today there's virtually no trace of that flood from 23 or so years ago. The plants and flowers have all grown back. Even the shape of the land seems to have recovered. Thus I am sure the land that burned will recover. ...In fact if it burned down here, it clearly already has!
The canyon narrows as you follow it up into the mountains. The trail darts from wildflower covered hillsides into riparian zones like this as it crosses the stream in a few places.
This little stream that today you can hop across... yes, this stream cut that 50-foot-wide swath of destruction years ago.
"So what are you hiking to?" a person might ask.
The thing is, right now there's no to. Other than to the end of the trail. In past years we'd hiked the Soberanes Canyon trail until it joins with the back end of the Rocky Ridge trail, then up the steep backside of Rocky Ridge, over the top which in the spring is carpeted with a riot of wildflowers, and down the stunning but toe-jamming oceanfront side of Rocky Ridge.
"So what do you see when you get there?"
Literally, we see a "trail closed" sign. But that's not the point. The point is we're not getting there, we are there. We're there the whole time. In beauty we walk.
On the way back from... halfway though our walk in beauty... I paused to shoot closeups of some of the wildflowers.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the photographic challenges of shooting flowers with this blurred background effect when we visited Spokane's flower garden. The challenges were the same here. The challenges are satisfying to face, though, because I have the knowledge, skill, and tools to surmount them.
Sometimes beauty is gazing miles out to see, sometimes it's thousands of feet overhead to a mountain, sometimes it's inches from my nose inside the petals of a wildflower. With beauty all around me I walk.
The adventure continues! Keep reading: Walking the Bluffs at Garrapata
As I noted in that other blog entry, hiking out & back in Soberanes Canyon was not our first choice. We thought we'd hike up & back Rocky Ridge via the oceanfront trail. Alas that trail is closed from fire damage— still, after a fire that occurred 5 years ago! The fire delivered a one-two punch to many mountainsides as it first burned off all their vegetation then left them susceptible to flash flooding. It's really the floods that occurred a few months after the fires that damaged hiking trails.
Well, the thing about walking in beauty is that beauty can be found all around. Rocky Ridge trail closed? Let's hike Soberanes Canyon instead. It's not the same form of beauty; it's beauty in its own way. In this case, today, with wildflowers all around.
Curiously this lush, full canyon was also once savaged by floods. Well, once within living memory anyway. When we first hiked this trail in the late 1990s there had been flash floods during days of heavy rain a few months earlier. The floor of this canyon with a 50-wide swath of destruction. Plants and bushes were wiped away, small trees were wiped away, even the trail was wiped away. We rock-hopped up the stream bed for a mile.
Today there's virtually no trace of that flood from 23 or so years ago. The plants and flowers have all grown back. Even the shape of the land seems to have recovered. Thus I am sure the land that burned will recover. ...In fact if it burned down here, it clearly already has!
The canyon narrows as you follow it up into the mountains. The trail darts from wildflower covered hillsides into riparian zones like this as it crosses the stream in a few places.
This little stream that today you can hop across... yes, this stream cut that 50-foot-wide swath of destruction years ago.
"So what are you hiking to?" a person might ask.
The thing is, right now there's no to. Other than to the end of the trail. In past years we'd hiked the Soberanes Canyon trail until it joins with the back end of the Rocky Ridge trail, then up the steep backside of Rocky Ridge, over the top which in the spring is carpeted with a riot of wildflowers, and down the stunning but toe-jamming oceanfront side of Rocky Ridge.
"So what do you see when you get there?"
Literally, we see a "trail closed" sign. But that's not the point. The point is we're not getting there, we are there. We're there the whole time. In beauty we walk.
On the way back from... halfway though our walk in beauty... I paused to shoot closeups of some of the wildflowers.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the photographic challenges of shooting flowers with this blurred background effect when we visited Spokane's flower garden. The challenges were the same here. The challenges are satisfying to face, though, because I have the knowledge, skill, and tools to surmount them.
Sometimes beauty is gazing miles out to see, sometimes it's thousands of feet overhead to a mountain, sometimes it's inches from my nose inside the petals of a wildflower. With beauty all around me I walk.
The adventure continues! Keep reading: Walking the Bluffs at Garrapata
