All the hikes

Map of Catalina with All the Hikes included...

Next hikes?  Probably Silver Peak area (on West End of island) and some hikes on East End (Lone Tree?)

Bullrush Canyon

Date:  28 August 2010

Who hiked:  Me, Hubby, Things 1 and 2

Where:  Middle Ranch - Bullrush Canyon - Salta Verde and back

When: 1005 - 1630

Distance:  10.7 miles (measured on GPS)

Weather:  sunny and clear

The bison is sad because he can't fit on the swing

This was a heck of a hike!  I've had my eye on it for some time now, and decided that this was the weekend.  We camped at Little Harbor on Friday night, ate breakfast (pancakes) in our little camper, and then drove to Middle Ranch, and parked our car near the horse stables.  We eyed a bison who was lounging near the play area.  Daniel and Zachary re-introduced us to all the horses (they do this every time we go to Middle Ranch) and we walked up past Thompson's Reservoir (see hike to Hacking Tower Ridge Road from last month!).

View of Thompson Reservoir

We climbed the hill to the crest behind the Reservoir in about 15 minutes and took the fork to the left (Bullrush Canyon Road) rather than to the right (Hacking Tower Ridge Road).  The trail took us down a steep hill into Bullrush Canyon.  The hike from the bottom was lovely -- flat and shaded here and there by oak trees. 

Shortly (about 50 minutes after starting down into the Canyon) we reached the Salta Verde Cut-off and turned to head up to the top of the adjacent ridge.  The trail was steep in places, but never for very long -- so while I was tired by the time I reached the top, I never experienced the desperation that I feel on other inclines on Catalina (see Godhilla entry).  

Thing 2 on the other hand was incensed that he was being asked to endure said climb, which he made abundantly clear by (1) complaining, (2) whining, (3) sitting and refusing to continue, and (4) throwing his backpack. As a result of the last antic, his can of Squirt soda (a treat for his lunch) was pierced and spewed soda inside his backpack.  Thus, throwing his backpack served only to make him angrier, soak his hat and his bag of goldfish crackers, and irritate his mother, whose patience was growing thin.  By then we were nearly to the top, however, and we decided to stop and eat lunch.

We had lunch under the shade of an oak tree and thirty minutes later both Things were fortified and cheered by the food and the sugar (remember the sodas); our next section of hiking was almost complaint-free.

But, you see, we had purposefully NOT told either Thing how long this hike was for fear of a preemptive mutiny.  Soon, the questions started...  "How long is this hike?"  "How much farther do we have to go?"  "When will we get back to our campsite?"  We deflected the questions with vague assessments of our progress, when the truth was that we had no idea how much longer we would be hiking...

Things 1 and 2 on the Salta Verde Ridge Road

Five minutes after our lunch break has ended, we reached the intersection of the Salta Verde Cut-off and the Salta Verde Ridge Road, which follows a ridge top along the windward side of the island.  The views from here were stunning, but the trail (as trails on Catalina do) wound up and down along the ridge, with some really steep uphill portions and some equally steep downhill portions.  The road had recently been "groomed" by a bulldozer, which meant that there was more than the usual supply of loose rocks on the trail.  Places that lacked rock had thick layers of powdery dirt, which billowed up from our feet to coat our legs.  Slipping hazards, to be sure, and nearly all of us had close-calls with stumbles, trips, and slides.

By now we were all tired.  Really tired.  Thing 2 was hanging by a thread.  Several times we left him sitting in the middle of the road, refusing to hike any more, only to have him catch up to us as we waited for him around the next bend (or over the next hill).  He kept insisting that he wished to be "teleported" back to the truck, which didn't happen as we were not living the Star Trek dream.  Thing 1 is a better hiker than Thing 2, mainly because he's older and stronger, but he occasionally lapsed into self-pity and whining.  He managed to pull himself out of it though when we pointed out that (a) we were tired too and (b) the only way to get back to the car was to walk there.

Bison rolling and scratching at the bulldozer

We ran into a herd of bison -- about 15 of them, rolling in the dust and scratching themselves on the parked bulldozer.  Thing 2 is very unwilling to get near to a bison, which is a good thing in the larger scheme of things.  But it can make it difficult when we have to actually go around one.  He screwed up the courage to hold Hubby's hand and skirted the herd on the far side of the road.  They were completely uninterested in us, other than to have us get out of their way -- they wanted to go up the road that we were coming down.

Boys at Valley of the Moons

Soon, we saw where we were to re-enter Bullrush Canyon.  It's called Valley of the Moons, I assume because it looks like a moonscape:  eroded earth, little vegetation.  I think it looks more like the desert scenes from "Planet of the Apes".  We finally reached it (4.5 hours after we started the hike) and both Things took to racing across the moonscape, laughing and chasing each other.  So much for severe fatigue, sore legs, and no energy, eh?

Thing 2 takes a break.  Can he get any dirtier?

Now we were back in Bullrush Canyon -- mostly flat, mostly shady, and a much more pleasant walk.  But by this time, we've hiked farther than we ever have before -- probably about 7 miles.  The most either Thing had ever done before was about 6 miles.  Now Hubby and I resorted to the brutal truth:  we have about two more hours to hike.  I must say that both Things took the news well.

But now I was hurting:  my thighs, my knees, and my feet.  Hubby was hurting, especially his knee.  Thing 1 complained about his feet hurting and Thing 2 was sure that his ankles were going to fall off.

Before we knew it (an hour later in real time), we were back to where the Salta Verde Cut-off trail snakes up the hill, then back to the steep hill up to the crest above the Reservoir, and then hobbling our way down the hill to the Reservoir.  Thing 2 has hit his fourth(?) wind by then and was running ahead to the gate that separates the Reservoir from the paddocks at Middle Ranch.  By 4:30 PM we were back in our car.

Hubby and I spent the rest of the evening feeling really old and creaky.  We have got to get out and do this more often -- but maybe not 11 miles at a time.  At least for now.

Birds seen:  Loggerhead shrike, Northern flicker, California quail, Mourning dove, Barn swallow, American coot, Acorn woodpecker, Northern mockingbird, American kestrel, Northern raven, Spotted towhee, Allen's hummingbird, Song sparrow, Bewick's wren, Horned lark, House finch

 Bullrush Canyon/Salta Verde Ridge Road hike

Zoom view of hike route

Other web sources about hiking Catalina

I've been looking for other web info about hiking on Catalina.  There's not a lot out there, but I did find some reviews of the Trans-Catalina Trail on yelp...  And here's a picture of Shark Harbor from the Shark Harbor Overlook.  ENJOY.

Hacking Tower Ridge Road

Date:  10 July 2010
Who hiked:  Me, Hubby, Thing2
Where:  Middle Ranch - Hacking Tower Ridge Road - Camp Cactus Road
When: 0950-1225
Distance:  4.2 miles (measured on GPS)
Weather:  sunny and clear (!)

No photos for this posting -- we forgot the camera!

We camped at Little Harbor again in our trusty tent camper, this time without Thing1 who is away at summer camp.  It has been a gloomy June and July thus far and today started out no differently.  We woke up on Saturday morning to the scoldings of a Northern shrike outside our door, ate pancakes, then piled in the truck for the trip to Middle Ranch.

We parked by the stables at Middle Ranch, saw some good birds here (black phoebe, northern raven, California quail, mourning dove, house finch, barn swallows), then walked up the road that leads to Thompson Reservoir.  We followed the path around the Reservoir, where we saw a pair of ruddy ducks and two pairs of coots.  One pair of coots also had a chick, ugly and orange-headed.  If you have never seen a coot chick, you have to click on this link.  They are remarkably unattractive.  We also saw barn swallows, acorn woodpeckers, northern ravens, European starlings, and northern mockingbirds here.

We had one pair of binoculars between the three of us and Thing2 finally figured out how to use them properly.  He was so excited about them that he carried them for extended periods of time, stopping to use them whenever he could.  We had to chuckle as he said, "Wow, that cactus looks so close!" and tried to touch it with his fingers while looking through the field glasses.

We walked about 1/3 of the way around the Reservoir to where the trail heads uphill and hit the intersection of the Bulrush Canyon Trail at about 1040.  At this point, the road that we were on was called Hacking Tower Ridge Road.  We were not making good time as we had taken a lot of time to watch coots and to investigate the spillway at the Reservoir, which looks like it might be really exciting on a skateboard or scooter.  Exciting and terrifying...  Anyway, we were really moseying along, not hiking very quickly.

About five minutes past the Bulrush Canyon Trail, we reached the crest of the hill, where we had a lovely view of the windward side of the island.  Here the trail follows the crest.  Although it was sunny where we were, it was still gray and overcast back in Little Harbor!  A red-tailed hawk was riding the thermals over the canyon and an American kestrel was hunting on an adjacent ridge.

Thing2 was entranced by the kestrel hovering and swooping down on its prey, which he watched through the binoculars.

There was a fenced area with enclosures in it on our right as we walked along the ridge and we followed an access road down to it.  There were electric wires along the top of the fence and we thought we heard electricity running through them.  This was odd as there wasn't anything inside the enclosure that needed protecting -- all the pens were empty.  Thing2 really wanted to touch the electric fence and kept asking us what it would feel like if he did.  We told him that it would hurt -- I know this from first-hand experience, having touched electric fences back when I was a curious child.  He finally screwed up his courage and touched it, only to discover that it wasn't electrified.  I think he was disappointed.  The noise that we had heard was humming flags and lines flying in the breeze.

The pens inside the fence had been used to captively breed and foster Catalina Island foxes.  The recovery plan was a rousing success and so there aren't any foxes there now, though the structures still remain.  Today they were being used by a couple of spotted towhees...

Our trail intersected Camp Cactus Road, which we took to the right to head down the ridge to Middle Ranch Road.  It wasn't long before we were back on Middle Ranch Road and walking back toward our truck.  We stopped briefly at Quail Valley, where the Catalina Conservancy has a Catalina Island fox, Tachi, in a naturalized enclosure.  We looked for Tachi -- who made only a brief appearance -- and then ate some goldfish and drank some water.  Soon we convinced Thing2 to hit the road again, and we were back at our truck 15 minutes later.

We saw two hacking stations on this hike.  These hacking stations were used in a bald eagle restoration program completed by the Institute for Wildlife Studies on Catalina.  A hacking station is used to introduce young raptors to new habitats and then to provide them with supplemental food without exposing them to humans.  This supplemental food increases their chances of survival, especially when they are young and inexperienced in hunting.  One hacking station was at the Reservoir and the remains of a second was on the Hacking Tower Ridge Road itself.

Birds seen:  Black phoebe, Northern raven, California quail, Mourning dove, House finch, Barn swallow, Acorn woodpecker, Northern mockingbird, American coot, Ruddy duck, European starling, Orange-crowned warbler, Chipping sparrow, Red-tailed hawk, American kestrel, Pacific slope flycatcher, Spotted towhee, Allen's hummingbird

Little Harbor to Boskey Dell

Date:  19 June 2010

Who hiked: Me, Hubby, Things 1 and 2

Time: 0900 - 1245 (approximate times)

Distance: 6.25 miles (measured on Google Earth)

Weather: cool, with overcast skies turning sunny

We had so much fun on our last camping trip, that I as soon as we got home, I went to Visitor's Services in Two Harbors and made reservations at Little Harbor for an additional three weekends during  the summer.  Our next campout was scheduled for the weekend that I returned from San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, which was also Father's Day weekend.  Interestingly enough, we had the campsite directly opposite our campsite in May.

Hooking up the camper to the truck, setting up the camper, and then doing it all in reverse went better than the first time...  we'll see if we're actually improving or if this was just luck!

The hike we planned for this weekend was through Boskey Dell, because I had heard that it was one of the most beautiful places on the island.  We decided to hike east-bound on the Trans-Catalina Trail, then cut down to Rancho Escondido, cross the Rancho Escondido road, and then hike down into Boskey Dell.  I was not sure that the Things would be up for a hike of this scale, but decided to purposefully mislead them about the length of this hike so as not to have a rebellion from the under-10 crowd at the beginning.

We walked from our campsite, across the Two Harbors Road, and then up the Trans-Catalina Trail (the old Sheep Chute Road -- see picture to right, which I took later in the day).  The first mile or so is all uphill, but the grade is fairly reasonable and so it is not too difficult.  We had some lovely views of Rancho Escondido, the hacienda, the horse rings, and the vineyards.  The Rusacks (Allison Wrigley Rusack and  her husband Geoff) started a vineyard on Catalina, a small-scale affair centered on Rancho Escondido, at about the same time that we arrived on the island.

While most wildflowers are finished blooming by now, the hills were covered in a blanket of golden flowers (see below).  In the morning the skies were gloomy -- June Gloom is a well-kept secret in usually-sunny SoCal -- but the field glowed with a yellow-orange warmth that cheered my heart.  What did not cheer my heart, however, is Mr. Grumpy Pants (aka Thing2).  He was in fine foul form this morning, grumping about everything.  We chose to rely on a guessing game, rather than food, to raise him from his unpleasant attitude and, once again, it worked like a charm.  He became almost human-like for most of the rest of the hike.

In about 1.6 miles, we reached the intersection of the TC trail and the trail to Rancho Escondido.  The trail went downhill to the Rancho Escondido Road and along the way we were overtaken by a Jeep Ecotour and the driver teased Daniel and Zachary about eating up all the ice cream that they had on the truck.  As we walked, we scared up Catalina quail and their babies, which are past the fluff-ball stage and flying now.  There were Hyla regilla tadpoles in the stream at the bottom of the gulch.   We reached the road in about 0.6 miles, crossed it, and walked the rest of the way (about 0.3 miles) to the bottom of the Canyon.  This area is known as Boskey Dell, which I have heard is a bastardization of "Bosque del...", though what it is the bosque (forest) of, I don't know.  There are some big trees here, mostly eucalyptus (introduced), sycamore, and some oaks.  There were trees riddled with sapsucker holes, sapping dripping down the tree boles.  The trail here follows a creekbed for about a quarter of a mile, then cuts back up to a real road/trail.  Lots of poison oak along the waysides!

We reached a lovely shelter with wooden shingles and a huge stone fireplace at about 3.1 miles.  It seemed a bit magical, actually, this pavilion in the middle of nowhere.  It seemed old -- perhaps it was a throw-back to the old Wrigley days, but we welcomed a chance to hang out and relax.  The boys "relaxed" by climbing a huge oak tree next to the shelter.

We set out again after our short break, and another quarter of a mile (3.4 miles from the start), we made a hairpin turn and began to head uphill.  It got quite steep and the roadbed was soft sandy dirt -- very difficult to walk in and not so fun...  Fortunately, the road quickly flattened out and afforded us a nice view of the valley.

The rest of the hike seemed to go by quickly, perhaps because we stop to look at less and less as the hike wears on.  We reached the  Eagle Roost Road and followed it for a short distance before branching off onto the Cottonwood Dam Trail.  The Cottonwood Dam Trail quickly drops off the face of the earth.  Seriously, it goes straight down into Cottonwood Canyon.  Like vertically.  You could slide your way to the bottom but for the sharp pointy rocks in the road.  I do not recommend hiking this trail in the opposite direction if you can avoid it. At 4.75 miles we were back on the Rancho Escondido Road, where we met up with a woman who was running from the Airport to Two Harbors (a distance of about 7.5 miles) and who thought she was on the Trans-Catalina trail.  We helped her with directions and pointed out the TC trail on the ridge rising out of Little Harbor (which we could see from here) and off she went, jogging along.  We turned down the Rancho Escondido Road, hoping to pick up a trail that would take us back over to the TC trail, close to where we started.  Alas, that was not to be...  we never did find a trail, even though one showed up on GoogleEarth.  I suspect that it was a deer trail that was visible from space, but that was hard to find on groundlevel.  So we stuck with the road.  Even though we were still some ways from our campsite, we could at least see it from here!

Thing 2 was total toast at this point and we were still about a mile from our campground (in a best case scenario).  He sat down in the road and insisted that he was not going to walk any more.  There wasn't any other option other than him walking, so the three of us just kept going.  We actually got out of sight, around a corner, before Thing 2 decided that he would take to his feet again.  We reached Shark Harbor Overlook, where the road to the left takes one to Middle Ranch, and the sharp turn to the right takes you down to Shark Harbor and on to Two Harbors.

It was a relief to have our goal so close, especially given Thing2's reluctance to hike and I was even more relieved when Hubby found a shortcut across a horseshoe bend, then a second shortcut from the road down into Shark Harbor.  At about 5.85 miles, we reached the beach at Shark Harbor and now my legs were tired.  I can only imagine how tired the Thing 2 was at this point!  Thing 1, like usual, was still hiking like a champ.  Another 0.4 mile and we were back in our campsite!

I'm posting this from the mainland, so don't have my field notebook with me.  Will post a list of birds seen as a comment.  But I do remember seeing the orange on an orange-crowned warbler!  It really was quite lovely.


Oh!  And we saw frogs!  Newly transformed Hyla regilla

Oh!  And we saw frogs!!

June Gloom Go Away

I am not a fan of the beautiful weather that we get (nearly) all the time on the island, but this June Gloom gets to me.  From about mid-May until July, the skies are gray and cheerless in the morning.  I have wondered how many vacations have been marred by The Gloom.  Yeah, The Gloom usually burns off by the afternoon, but it just doesn't feel like summer while it lasts.  I would welcome this weather in November or December -- it seems the perfect weather for short winter days.  But in the long days of summer, I want summer weather -- sunshine, puffy clouds, and blue skies!


So my advice to all you vacation planners out there:  come to Catalina in September, August, or October.  Glorious late-summer weather and the water is (almost) above 70 degrees.

Little Harbor to Buffalo Reservoir

Date:  15 May 2010

Who hiked: Me, Hubby, Things 1 and 2

Time: 0900 - 1245 (approximate times)

Distance: 5.5 miles (measured on GPS)

Weather: overcast, cool

Having recently purchased a used pop-up tent camper, we decided to take our first family camping trip to Little Harbor.  The pop-up was a purchase from some friends who are retiring and leaving Catalina.  It is in good repair and has been happily used by Mr. and Mrs. Handlebar and their two boys for a number of years.  Hubby and I have reached that auspicious age at which sleeping on the ground is not looked forward to.  Well, perhaps the sleeping part is still looked forward to, but the unfolding and loosening of the back in the morning is not...  Thus, the availability of this camper was most fortuitous and we snapped it up.

Saturday morning began quite early when the Things awoke around 6 AM, with empty tummies and open mouths.  After breakfast and breakfast KP, we loaded up our daypacks with water, snacks, binoculars, and jackets and headed out.  Our goal today was to hike along the Trans-Catalina trail, then head down to the Lower Buffalo Reservoir and pick up an access road that would take us back to Little Harbor.

Straddling Little and Shark Harbors, on the windward side of Catalina, is a finger of rock known as the Whale's Tail.  See the close up GoogleEarth image to see why!  Before embarking on our hike, we headed down to the Whale's Tail, where there were many live-forever plants (Dudleya is the genus) blooming, some of them perched perilously close to the edge of the cliffs.  We also were excited to watch a raven incubating eggs in its nest.  See the picture of Hubby and the Things watching the raven...

We walked through the campground to the west-bound trailhead of the Trans-Catalina Trail.  The TC trail heads straight up the ridge from Little Harbor.  Even when trails are planned on Catalina, they rarely use switch-backs and this trail was no exception.  However steep the uphill portion of the trail is here, it is mercifully short, so after a fairly brief and not very taxing climb, we were on the ridge and on our way toward the reservoir.  It was an overcast and cool day -- one of those days when you feel cool to the touch, but are toasty warm on the inside -- as long as you are moving.

As we walked, Thing2 was most unhappy.  He was tired, he was hungry, he was bored.  This, as you might have surmised from other accounts of hikes with Thing2, is a recurring theme.  We find that the best solutions are to (1) take his mind off of the walking with guessing games and/or (2) feed him.  So at this point, I broke out the bag of goldfish, which he carried and ate throughout the hike.  A whole bag of goldfish...

The Things played detective on the hike.  First, we found shells on the ridge about 800 feet above the ocean.  The Things spent some time thinking about how they might have gotten there.  Thing 2 thought that birds might have carried them up to the ridge from the ocean, while Thing 1 suggested that the ridge had been underwater at one time...  Later we found a tail from an alligator lizard on the trail, but no lizard.  Thing1 guessed correctly that the lizard must have been attacked by a predator and dropped its tail to try to distract the predator.  We suspected that the ploy was unsuccessful, because we figured that if the predator had been distracted by the tail, it would have eaten it.  Since we found the tail, we figured that the predator had eaten the lizard and left the tail.  I like having smart children.

The trail is flat with a number of uphill climbs, especially around the 2 mile mark.  Because it was overcast, we didn't have much of a view, but I am sure that on a clear day this would be a most scenic hike.  After about 2.25 miles, we turned right on a path that went down to the Little Harbor road near the Lower Buffalo Reservoir.  It was clear that we needed to go to the right, but the trail immediately was overgrown with grasses, so the trail disappeared for a bit before reappearing.  The path from here on out was full of seed-bearing grasses, which burrowed their way into our socks and shoes.  There was much complaining from the Things about this and many stops to de-seed our socks.  The hike down to the reservoir from the ridge was easy, not too steep, and very picturesque.  Oaks dotted the hillside, with rock outcrops and flowers blooming.  Bewick's wrens and Western meadowlarks were singing.  We hiked down to the reservoir, then along the road until we got to the access road under a powerline.

We walked up the hill and at the crest, the road petered out to a grass-covered path that was barely discernable.  We bushwhacked along the crest of this ridge, knowing that it would take us most of the way to Little Harbor.  Here and there we had to dodge cactuses and throughout the hike we had to stop to pull seeds out of our socks.  Bill took the lead so that he could knock some of the seeds off the plants before the boys came through and as he's blazing out trail, he hears the heart-stopping buzz of a rattlesnake.  Everyone stopped until he quickly located Mr. Grumpy Snake, which was deep in a bush (*what kind?) directly in front of him.  He backed off and we all watched the snake and i snapped a few pictures from a safe distance.  Then we made a short detour around Mr. Grumpy Snake and continued on our way.  The Things were excited about the snake and talked of little else for the rest of the hike.

Eventually, the "trail" took us back to Little Harbor road, which we followed the rest of the way to the campground.  We walked through the campground and were buzzed by another rattlesnake.  This snake quickly slid away into the tall grass when I stopped to take a few pictures.  This encounter troubled me more than the first:  I expect to find a snake in the scrub, but not in the grass near a campsite!  That was a sobering thought as I often let the Things run amok once we're in the campground -- but not anymore!

While I was dealing with the rattlesnake, the Things and Hubby were preoccupied with a kestrel in a palm tree that had a lizard in its beak.

We saw some cool insects on this hike, including a short-horned grasshopper, a darkling beetle (genus Eleodes), and some bugs (hemipterans) on bladder-pod plants.  It was really interesting to see the hemipterans because there were multiple stages on the same plant:  eggs (as in the picture), juveniles, and adults.  In fact, most of the adults were in the process of making more bugs...  if you know what I mean.  And it was a fun opportunity to mess with my camera and its digital macro setting.

Birds seen: Killdeer, Red-tailed hawk, American kestral, Catalina quail, Western gulls, Northern raven, Barn swallow, European starling, Western meadowlark, Orange-crowned warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Chipping sparrow, House finch

Flowers in bloom:  Opuntia (prickly pear), lupines, Indian paintbrush, Lilac mariposa, Catalina mariposa, Bindweed, Live forevers (Dudleya), Bush sunflowers (Encelia californica), yellow lilies, Yarrow, Mustard, Crystalline ice plant, Rattleweed