Archive for August, 2009
Time to progress
I’m going to regress slightly at this point to talk about hiking readiness in Southern California—or lack of it. I thought going into my first hike, Pole Creek, that I was in pretty good shape. Boy, was I wrong! I had been putting in 45 minute walks every day throughout the neighborhood that included a 25 degree hill climb that was approx. 100 feet in length. Coming out of this hike I discovered I was nowhere in the kind of shape I needed to be in.
Tar/Sespe Creek info
Shortly before we went on our Tar/Sespe Creek adventure, I did some research on what info might already be out there about the area we were thinking of hiking in. I came across the following two sites that give more of the “technical” information of what I was looking for. They also have better photography since they went in the Spring when there was more water flowing and everything was a little greener in Ventura County and Southern California.
by Christopher Earls Brennen, 4-10-2003
(please report any broken links to me.)
Tar/Sespe Creek Hike
Tar/Sespe Creek Topo
Hike date: June 20, 2009–I mentioned earlier that on the Internet I found some good information about a number of hikes down to Sespe Creek in the Sespe Wilderness. A couple of Southern California hikes caught my eye: Sespe Creek Hot Springs and Sespe Creek/Tar Creek hikes. After looking at these articles, the Sespe/Tar Creek hike looked like the most interesting because of the cascades and waterfalls down Tar Creek. It was also shorter than the Hot Springs hike which appealed to us since we were newby hikers and in need of being in better shape. 7.3 miles to the Sespe/Tar Creek or 9.3 miles to the Sespe Hot Springs. Tar Creek won out since we had had no idea those cascades and falls were even back there—we wanted to see them!
Pole Creek conclusion
We followed the road up a steep incline and at the top we saw the old Arundell Adobe. It was pretty neat there so we sat on a long log beneath a group of old olive trees and had a snack. Three guys in a pickup stopped and asked us what we were doing there. We told them we were from Fillmore, on a hike and just wanted to see what it was like back in there. They also asked how we got there and we told them from Pole Creek. They acted as though we were not supposed to be there. After they left we wondered what that was all about.
