Quote
Sam D.
How accurate is the driving map? I always exited on Milpas and took 144 and 192 and El Cielito Rd dealing with permanent temporary detour along the way.
If I start at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, can I take Mission Canyon Road->Foothill Rd->Mountain Rd-> Gibraltar ???
I must confess that, when it comes to driving, I am a very GPS-dependent person, and so often don't even know exactly what route it is that I'm taking! I'm not too familiar with Santa Barbara, as I actually live in Pasadena. I have the coordinates of the trailhead parking bookmarked in my GPS unit, and then I usually just blindly follow what the GPS tells me to do.
The "B" destination on the googlemap is definitely correct. I just set the "A" origination as the center of Santa Barbara, figuring that one can easily adjust the directions as needed. In fact, if you want, you can replace "Santa Barbara" on the googlemap with your home address, click "get directions" and it will give you a fresh page with exact directions from your house. As long as the googlemaps results give you something that eventually gets you going up Gibraltar road and then turning right onto East Camino Cielo, you should be good. If it has you doing anything other than that, beware the possibility that it's navigating you along some dirt "roads" on the other side of the mountain. If that happens, I'd suggest just driving to Santa Barbara, and then following the directions I've linked to.
Regarding the road block, I come in from the south, up the 101. The first time I came, my GPS navigated me right to that semi-permanent road block that you're talking about, and then I hit the "avoid roadblock" button, and then hit "yes" when it asked me if it was a permanent roadblock (if I recall correctly, it sure looked permanent -- it was something on the order of a whole hill having mudslid into the road). It recalculated me to a different route, and every time since then, it's had me take a different exit off the 101, and then a route that eventually takes me to Gibraltar road. But, GPS-dependent as I am, I haven't the foggiest clue what that original route was, nor what the one it navigates me on now is.
So, having made this long-winded disclaimer, I think the route you take when exiting Milpas off the 101 sort of rings a bell as being the route my car GPS takes me along. As to your proposed route from the museum, the same googlemap as I linked to above, but with the SBMNH as the starting point seems to suggest pretty much the route that you're recommending.
I'm sure this navigational cluelessness on my part really inspires confidence in that map I posted, huh? Haha. Rest assured, when it comes to wilderness situations, my brain is actually turned on. There usually aren't any terribly serious consequences to getting occasionally misled by the computer-literalism of a GPS, when you're navigating in a car, through civilization. So I feel I can afford to be mentally lazy in civilization, as I can't when I'm in the middle of the woods.
I use a GPS unit in the woods as well, but in my experience, a GPS unit is a very useful supplement to the map (i.e., makes it easier to figure out where exactly on the map you currently are), but should not at all be thought of as a replacement to a paper map. For openers, the paper map won't disappear due to running out of battery power! And, generally speaking, it's always good to double-check that what the GPS unit is telling you squares with the features of the land you see right around you, both on your paper map and on the GPS unit's map. For example, being deep inside a canyon often confuses the hell out of a GPS unit, because the steep rock walls reflect the satellite signals all over the place. I've been in some canyons where the signal reflection has my unit thinking that I'm standing atop an adjacent hill or mountain. Though just about any other sort of situation, where the unit has a clear exposure to the sky, they're pretty damned spot-on about your location.
That said, I love GPS in the wilderness. Especially when navigating along the Santa Ynez and Gibraltar reservoir, at the portion of the hike to Little Caliente where the trail gets sketchy. Sighting nearby hills and finding them relative to my GPS position and consulting both GPS map and paper map really gave me the confidence needed to bushwhack in the right direction when needed. I definitely lost the trail a few times on that stretch of the hike. Good route-finding skills are a must for that portion of the hike.
Actually, if the river level isn't too high, one recommendation I'd make for that sketchier portion of the hike would be, cross the Santa Ynez, head left (whether you've found the trail again or not) along its bank, and then once you get a little away from the river and are going along the swampy outskirts of the reservoir, just take your shoes off and wade barefoot into the water, and follow it northward. The water will eventually cohere into a stream (this would be Mono Creek, I believe, not the Santa Ynez, although both waterways are connected via the reservoir). Just keep wading upstream, and that will eventually get you to Mono camp, and back on track with the hike. The stream bed is a little mucky, but it's more like an eerily smooth sand than like the sticky-glop-from-hell that we're used to thinking of when we think "mud." You don't sink in too far into it, either. I'm sure that can change with the seasons, though, so be cautious as always. At any rate, if you have trouble following the trail, wading the stream is a lot more pleasant than straight-up bushwhacking it through the brambles.
Was going to put this suggestion into text on the map, but found that this much detailed direction was covering up too much of the actual map portion of the map.
Joel
