I defended my thesis! And then I took a few days to breathe, before coming in for a few weeks of cleaning up, but the weekend immediately following my defense, I went out for a nice hike. I went out with Nathan and Joe to the Boney Park Loop, located in the Boney Mountain Wilderness, located in in Pt. Mugu State Park, which abuts the Santa Monica Mountains NRA. According to Afoot and Afield in Los Angeles County, this hike is 10 miles total, with 2k’ of total climb.
Setting out on our day
A demo of a home in the style of earlier residents
This trail actually starts in the Santa Monica Mountains NRA, so we drove on out the 101 to just past Thousand Oaks, and then turned off towards the park. We walked on a tiny bit of trail over to the Visitor’s Center / Native American Cultural Center, where we bought a map, looked at exhibits for a minutes, then went on our way. At this point, we were on fire road for a bit. In fact, this was more than just fireroad, this was paved road (but not open access) but we were walking through a beautiful field, alive with greens and yellows, so it was ok. Continuing on this road, we shortly entered Pt. Mugu State Park, and began our descent down a canyon, all while on the road. This is definitely a popular area; we saw lots of different use types on the road. Walkers, bikers, even some equestrians and also a park service truck.
Think we’ve got a hiker, equestrians, a car, and a bike, hiding next to the car
We turned off the main heavy duty fire road as we neared the bottom of the canyon, and kept going on a secondary fire road. There were lots of oak trees near to the trail, providing nice views and occasional shade. We kept going along this track until we reached an equestrian camp site, as I recall it (which also had some sorts of buildings there, but I don’t recall them very well). There were a few picnic tables here, and we sat down and had some snack.
This tree has some serious kinks to work through, eh?
At this point, we turned off the fire road an onto actual trail. The sign I have a photo of claims this is the “Blue Mountain Trail”, for at least some of it. We walked up and along this canyon for a while, even with a stream crossing, until we came to the turnoff for the Old Boney Trail, which we basically took until we got back to the grasslands by the visitor center. After the cool of the canyon, it was nice to have some views, but it was definitely warmer in the sun surrounded by the chaparral. After climbing for a bit, we did end up getting some pretty nice views of the lovely sandstone peaks in this area.
Tying my shoes is serious business, kids
One of many in an ongoing series of closeups of nathan
After this, the trail goes up and down a bit as it goes over some ridgelines, but then mostly heads down the flank of a mountain. There were a couple really nice clouds scudding right through the peaks around us, which looked pretty great. Of course, like a jerk, I got right in Joe’s way just as he wanted to shoot at one point. Eit! Oh, and I was shooting with a 40D…nice! At one point, there is a turnoff that promises a short jaunt to a waterfall, which we wanted to go down, but we met a group that was just coming out that told us that there was a rattlesnake just up the trail, that had bitten a dog. We stood around for a while and watched a party of kids and adults leave, but then someone reported that the snake was still there, so we went with discretion/valor, and just kept going.
Working it’s way through the hill
I got some nice shots of a moth along the way! It just kept hanging out waiting for me to shoot it, so I obliged 🙂 We then cut through a mishmash of paths through the field back to the visitor’s center, then took a parallel trail to the one we had taken from the parking lot. I was almost a little sad that we had done that, since it actually had a hair of up in it, but in the end I was glad I did, since we actually saw a deer on that part. Hooray for seeing large mammals! Got back to car, drove to in’n’out, drove home – all in all, nice day.
pose for me, little moth
Back at the grassland we started from
boing boing boing
grace sent me my team kilroi shirts, and they arrived just before my defense. go team kilroi!
