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Santa Barbara has some of the best hiking anywhere, and lots of it!
Lots of hiking trails are listed here with maps, topos and directions to the trailhead. Print out what you need and take it with you.
Then, come back and talk about your adventure.
Diane's Big Adventures
Davy Brown Trail
I went on the Sierra Club hike to the Davy Brown trail. The Sierra Club always calls it the Fir Canyon hike.
Fir Canyon is a really pretty place. If you are ever camping at Davy Brown, it's a lovely dayhike. If you don't mind the long drive from Santa Barbara, it's a lovely dayhike for anyone. There is a nice creek, a shady canyon, steep hills and lots of big trees. Sometimes there are swarms of ladybugs and other times there are nice wildflowers.
One new thing I noticed is there are signs marking the trail now. As you go up the canyon, you see the first one at a junction. There's a trail that descends to the creek to the left and another that climbs up along the slope. The one that climbs up is marked by a sign that says Trail.
Normally when the Sierra Club does this hike they take the left trail that descends to the creek, not the one marked with the sign. After crossing the creek the trail climbs very steeply up a slippery hill for quite a ways. The hill is slippery because there are a lot of oak leaves all over the trail and also because it's the usual gravelly stuff that is slippery when dry.
On our Sierra Club Hike, three of the hikers set off quickly ahead. They all took the trail that was marked, not knowing that the Sierra Club hike always goes the other way. So the rest of us never saw them until the end of the day.
That other trail, the one that is marked, is the Willow Springs Trail. That trail goes up to an old campsite (not sure if there's anything there in the campsite anymore) and then up to the Catway road between Figueroa Mountain Road and Zaca Peak.
Heading up the Sierra Club's route, there's a junction where there is again a new trail sign. It appears that the Willow Springs trail has a connector to the Davy Brown trail. Near this junction there is a marker about some history of the trail. Nearby there is also another trail that heads up the side of the hill to the east. This will connect up near Ranger Peak. The Davy Brown trail connects with Figueroa Mountain Road.
After having lunch near Figueroa Mountain Road, TrailHacker and I thought we would take the Willow Springs connector and see what it was like. I wanted to see if they put trail signs on the trail because it was recently worked and maybe hopefully avoid slipping and falling down that steep hill. The trail seemed really good for a few yards and then fell into the typical Santa Barbara standard trail condition of disrepair. TrailHacker kept insisting that even if we made it to Willow Springs camp, the trail down would be too overgrown to make it back to Davy Brown campground. He remembered all these huge blowdowns. I kept thinking that there's no way they'd put all these prominent signs if the trail wasn't complete. But he insisted there's no way they would have fixed all the blowdowns. So we turned back before finding out how it was.
When we got back to the cars at Davy Brown campground, the three who took the wrong path said the trail was in good condition and that they ended up on Catway road. So it sounds like if you head up Fir Canyon on the Davy Brown trail, you can choose to go to Figueora Mountain Road on the Davy Brown trail via the old, now un-marked route, or you can take Willow Springs Trail and then take the connector at the old Willow Springs Camp (they said it was really faint) or you can just continue up to Catway Road.
Posted on 2010-08-29
More adventures
Is now a book!
My trail journal from Santa Barbara to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail
My trail journal on the Pacific Crest Trail