PWAs Wilderness in Los Padres Forest Part III, drive-by wilderness?

Black Mountain PWA invasive Oats with Rocks

The Black Mountain PWA unit is the largest of the several on the schedule at 17,000+ acres and the most accessible with a paved road all the way to the 3625ft summit peak where we found a geodesic dome, home to the FAA radar installation safeguarding many a traveler wending through our skies. Shooting from the summit was efficient as the proposed wilderness lies 360 degrees about with the exception of a corridor of exclusion for the road. I suppose this neat trick wasn’t considered when earlier wilderness proposals went forward. As a larger parcel there are a couple of existing trails that looked in good order and there are adjacent OHV trails not much in use mid-week in the fall. The Wilson (foot) Trail drops off the summit running along a curving downward ridge that affords spectacular sunset views, an enclosed small valley below the radar tower and a range of micro-habitats. Even at Turkey Flat Campground, I enjoyed a great sunset while recovering from my hammock slump while Jeff pursued the Nirvana photo high on the peak. 

Black Mountain PWA near Wilson Trail

The existing Machesna Wilderness has three adjacent PWAs separated by roads; Fraser Canyon, Queen Bee, and the Bear Trap units. All these seem like "drive-by" wilderness areas to me. Small enough to see much of them from a car, but still I think good additions as they are just across the road from larger existing wilderness areas. We visited the three of them, carefully navigating among possible back roads and confirming which view was in each parcel, not a task for the directionally challenged! We spread three maps, checked the sun and stars as well as compass to make certain the proper views were in the camera viewfinders as we made our way across the landscape.

  

Castle Crags in Machesna Wilderness

Chipmunk

Castle Crags were viewable from Queen Bee & Bear Trap units though they rise dramatically from the existing Machesna area. In the Bear Trap Unit we explored a cow-trodden canyon and finally summited a small peak with a 360 degree view extending into Machesna and adjacent Queen Bee. Heavily used for grazing, these three units are bounded by dirt roads and OHV trails favored by recreational riders and hunters. Very few people were traveling and camping in the area midweek October. We shared our three camps with no one and saw only two campsites in use all four days. One camper demonstrated the personal need for isolation from society. We figured both he and the public were well served by his self-imposed wilderness experience! Wilderness for violence reduction.

On the dirt roads, we met 2 hunters on OHVs and a couple of autos. Our last campsite had no posted name and none was available among our three maps though it sported a red steel-framed camp table and vertically mounted bedspring set. Cool nights, still air and quiet in all quarters lend themselves to peaceful sleep.

We saw few bird species and not many individuals. Juncos and towhees were most numerous and the expected scrub jays were fewer. UFO’s squirted between chaparral bushes. UFO is my term for birds I can’t identify before they disappear. This is such great habitat in which to disappear whether bird or misanthrope. I saw a couple of thrashers, and a few wren tits. A juvenile bald eagle soared into view and posed on a fence post and we spotted a roadrunner on our way home. Mammals were fewer still with a couple of deer near Pozo road, one chipmunk and though track for bobcat and coyote were evident. Ground squirrels rule the landscape.

This process of proposing and supporting the proposal is long and fraught with problems. Will congress agree? Will there be opposition? Will the opposition organize a lobby against the proposal? I was interviewed many months ago about another PWA near my home. LPFW wanted my support as a local resident for the proposal, as I considered their map and description and I was surprised how small this area is. My personal criteria for wilderness has to do with size and nearness to urban noise. While this nearby area is compromised on those two counts, it also supports large predators, black bear and mountain lion as well as coyote and bobcat along with eagles and hawks. I include predators as indicators of wild places and feel they need protection if we are to have viable habitats. For that reason I support this local strip wilderness, called the Condor Ridge unit. It’s getting trashed now by careless folks who love the outdoors, but don’t seem to keep from abusing it in the process.

Wilson Trail on Black Mountain

The more remote units we visited this week seem easier to support on most counts with their adjacent larger wilderness parcels already in existence. I don’t expect to convince anyone, but if you’re asking, creating more wilderness is a good thing. We would be poorer for not providing for the wildlife, the plant community and our own clean air and water if we fail to preserve these wild places. Most important from my perspective is that wild places build our perspective as a species on what is important now, any now.

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Proposed Wilderness Areas II Los Padres National Forest

Black Mountain to the sky

It’s a high value simply knowing there are wild places. It’s somewhere different and something different where human attempts at control are missing and landscaping is on a huge scale that captures light and darkness, color and motion in ways our yards and parks cannot.  Architecture is wonderful and I admire those who use nature most, but they fail to achieve the same inspiration as the best of nature gone wild. It is unique. While those places exist we still have a home where we all started and we need it now and more each day.

Invasive Star Thisle

Jeff Jones Lumnos.com 

This preamble is to introduce the accompanying photos from a few days with Wilderness Landscape Photographer, Jeff Jones on a photo-shoot to document new proposed wilderness areas in the Los Padres National Forest. Jeff was contracted by Los Padres Forest Watch (LPFW) to provide photos to support a proposal to be set before Congress land parcels for consideration of inclusion in the Wilderness Act of 1964. All photos presented here are mine and not to be confused in any way with the exacting photographic skill and magic applied by Jeff to his images. You can visit Lumnos.com for examples of his fine works.

Fraser Canyon across Pozo Rd from Wilderness

Wilson Trail on Black Mountain

There are more than 300,000 acres of existing Forest Land to consider for inclusion (called Proposed Wilderness Additions, PWA) with 864,000 acres of existing LP wilderness (http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/other-resources/featured-wilderness-los-padres-national-forest-85899385405)  in a stretch of nearly 220 miles of LP Forest on and near the California central coast overlapping into arid lands. This map provides a view of Proposed Wilderness Areas (PWA): http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/calwild/pages/28/attachments/original/1377618775/Central_Coast_Wild_Heritage_Map_2013_DRAFT.pdf?1377618775

Yerba Santa, Chemise, Sage on Black Mountain PWA

While at UCSB I surveyed students about their personal thoughts on what could exist in wilderness and found they would include roads, gas stations, power lines and fast food stops in many of their definitions. By their lights, I live in deep, primitive backwoods far from the edge of civilization, undoubtedly what they consider the wilderness. 

Baldy in Santa Lucia Wilderness

We have varying definitions and yet the Wilderness Act is specific about un-trammeled lands, free of roads and human structures; motor and wheel free. It’s like the Latin name for plant species, precise and the same whether administered in National Parks, National Forest, Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service . Finding suitable new areas in the 21^st Century is a challenge. Lands might be re-wilded after other use and roads abandoned so suitable habitats could be included. The process is daunting and requires sustained good efforts.

Blue Oak Woodland on Fraser Canyon PWA

 We hit the high country in the Santa Lucia High Moutain PWA near Pozo road. Pozo, Panza and Padres figure large in the area names of roads, ranges, canyons and more. I didn’t see a trail in this unit and it has the look of a low-density recreation use. Today I learned a condor monitoring station resides on one of the small peaks and birders consider this prime country.

 The High Mountain Camp provided deep solitude among aging oaks and long views reaching the San Andreas Fault. I literally hung out in the trees from a hammock/tent I’ve used the last eight years. Unfortunately, the trees were not cooperating with appropriate spacing. I need more than 10 feet and less than 16 between trees AND the trees need to be less than 20 inches in circumference. Maybe that doesn’t sound demanding, but I hung in less comfort than usual resulting in early slump of energy.

Nearby, the Garcia PWA to the east is a small addition with a blue oak forest and many toyon bearing ripe red fruit attracting many birds. Like most PWAs, roads create boundaries and were probably, the reason they weren’t included in the larger parcel earlier. This quilting process should add more land to the habitat and stitch together a more protected viable landscape of size enough to support the wildlife and plant communities. The area needed for one bear is sizeable, approximately 4 square miles in this area, much more than in the Pacific Northwest. The same is true of mountain lions.