Bikepacking 101, the REST of the story

I survived!

It was a great overnight trip, and I learned a LOT! But I"ll start with some pictures and go into the story from there. Hang on, cuz AWAY WE GO!

 So here is my gear (most of it, there were a few items I thought of after this shot, such as camp clothes to get out of cycling gear. My gear and the bags weighed right at 15lbs.

 Parked at my jump off point, with an 8 mile climb, then 15 miles on the Sierra Madre Ridge to get to the Painted Rock, my camping point.

 Getting close, this view is the first time you see the white rock. There is an entire valley of it, and THE Painted Rock is a lone bit just up from the valley.

 Painted Rock. There is a black hole (the cave with the ancient Chumash Indian paintings in it) about dead center of the picture and just down from teh top of the rock formation. You access the cave from the backside and on top. The Forest Service has put bars in place now to TRY to keep people out of the cave (destroying it)...but people still get inside. I take my pics from the ground or outside the cave.

 So I didn't want to camp AT Painted Rock (for one thing it's right off the dirt road, so anybody else who might pass thru would see me, and I like to be unseen in my camping). I continued past a bit and followed a game trail off the road, across the meadow around the back of Painted Rock, and slightly downhill, pretty much just above the valley of the rock. This smaller formation was my spot. I leaned my bike against the rock for the night, and there were several small puka's (caves) where I put some of my stuff, keeping it off the ground and away from most things that might want to mess with it.

 This is the view looking east, OVER the top of the valley of the Rock. You can see the road slanting across the hillside on the right of the shot. Then there is another large meadow in that valley in the distance with more smaller rock formations, and the road goes right thru it. A beautiful view for sure!

 This is the spring at Painted Rock. There is a large metal cylinder that the pipe (cut/broken, and now pouring spring-water right onto the ground) used to feed for the cattle that had been here years prior. I haven't seen cows here for 2 years now...HOORAY! (Cows really ruin it I can attest...cow pies EVERYWHERE, flies, stinky, stomping the trail into a bumpy mess that is hard to even ride a mt bike on, AND they can be dangerous...and I would know!)

Looking from the east at my campsite. I laid my bivy bag/sleeping bag in the grass in what LOOKED like a flat spot. I was wrong. I no sooner crawled in and I immediately slid to the bottom of the bivy bag...the sleeping bag and inflatable pad are SLICK! So I hauled the combo up to the rock where my bike was leaning, and plopped it down on the hard/flat dirt just in front of my bike. It was fine. Oh, also I should mention...you can see the game trail I rode here on just above the low rock in the upper middle of the picture. It continues around the back side of the big rock my bike is leaning on (and I was lying on the ground sleeping at) and continues I don't know where. So I'm sound asleep around 11pm, when suddenly it sounds like I"m being attacked by a band of Indians who are making coyote noises! I don't know how many there were, but it SOUNDED like a LOT! I grabbed my red pepper spray and my flashlight (inside my sleeping bag) and quickly turned on the light, and the coyotes on the warpath noises immediately STOPPED! That's how close they were! Holy smokes I was terrified! And now there wasn't a SOUND! Where did they go? Were they just on the other side of the rock, plotting their attack? (has anybody ever been attacked by coyotes?) All I know is that I didn't get back to sleep very quick, clutching my flashlight and pepper spray tightly!  But I did eventually fall asleep. I was quite warm until the wee hours of  the morning (the coldest part of the night) and it turns out all my breathing has made quite a bit of condensation on the inside of my bivy bag, and it's all going right into the top of my down sleeping bag, so it's losing it's insulation properties and I"m starting to get cold. Thankfully the sun started to come up not too much longer, and I immediately got up, made HOT COFFEE, and watched the sun come up! Ahhhh....coffee camping, SWEET!

 This is a panarmaa I made of the Painted Rock area as I descend into the valley. It's really different than the typical California Central Coast terrain.

  Another pan of the area looking east.

 A Pan of some of the white rocks that I explored after making my camp.

 This is a pan of 2 vertical shots of the white rocks in the valley, looking south-east. That's the road in the top going across. My camp is back to the left of the picture (a ways).

 More of the white rock...there is a LOT of it, HUGE formations too! Most of it I can't get to due to the thickness of the brush, and how DEEP the valley is with no way to get to the bottom. I only ended up exploring a small portion of what I hoped to...looking for more Chumash rock paintings.

A final shot in the rocks. In this shot I'm near the edge of the formation, with a LONG DROP just ahead and to the right. I'm mostly afraid of heights these days, so I stay well away from the edge.

 Breaking camp Saturday morning. I choose campsites well...this one had a large flat rock for me to lay-out my gear to dry before I packed it.

 Everything is packed and I"m ready to ride. I'm heading east another 10 miles to Santa Barbara Cyn, which will be my turn-around point today. Then I'll head back to the car.

 In the meadow on the other side of the valley. This formation has an arch to it, just about int he middle...see it? I'd never noticed it before, and I've ridden by it at least a half-dozen times now.

 Looking back across the valley I just rode across...my campsite is actually visible in this picture across the Valley of Rock, if you know where to look. Isn't that a beautiful valley?

 And here I'm at the junction of Sierra Madre Ridge (on the left). Santa Barbara Cyn (on the right), and the Forest Service Road (heads towards where I"m standing to take the picture). The Tour de Los Padres comes here on the Sierra Madre Ridge, and then turns right and takes the FS road to Big Pine (this weekends destination from the other direction) and eventually on to Santa Barbara for the finish.

 So I turned around at SB Cyn, and now I'm back at Painted Rock having  quick stop and snack before I head back towards the car (about 21 miles to go from here). So this is a picture from the ground of the Painted Cave...you can see the red'ish paintings on the roof.

Here I zoomed in (from the ground still) of the cave, and NOW you can see the paintings.

 So I'm about ready to ride, having my snack, enjoying the quiet and sun, and for some reason I look up at the little cusp of trees at the top of the little rise just ahead of me. Something was amiss, but I had no idea what...why did I suddenly look here? Wait, what is that in the trees? Do you see it?

 Here is a zoomed in picture. Yep...just what I suspected. A COW! (a bull or steer to be more precise, the thing is HUGE!) Where on earth did he come from? There has been ZERO sign of any cows here...no prints, cow pies, nothing! How long as he been here (in the area)? Did he get left behind 2 years ago somehow when the last herd was pulled out? I find that hard to believe...but here he is. There are cattle-guards on both sides of this valley...and the gates are closed. No cow will cross a cattle-guard. So just where did he come from? I was here yesterday, and I"m LOOKING for signs of cows (I"m afraid of cows). Even at the spring when I filtered water last night, there were no foot prints in the muddy water and the deep green grass around the spring outlet. This must be the smartest cow on the planet! A STEALTH COW! He knows if he leaves any signs that he's here he will be brought out and eaten (well, maybe he doesn't know THAT). He hadn't made a sound, in fact, when I THOUGHT I saw him in the shade I stood watching, and he didn't move a muscle until suddenly the ear on the left flicked like there were flies on it and he was shooing them away. Until that ear moved I wasn't sure it wasn't some trick of rock or something in the shade.

Anyway...thankfully he stayed right where he was at, and I got on my bike and rode away. Maybe he is "The Guardian Of The Painted Rock". You defile the site and you answer to him! I'd be ok with that. So my ride back to my car took abut 3 hours, and was competently uneventful. 

So...what did I learn from this trip? I learned that a "game trail" is made by wild animals, and it's probably NOT a good idea to lay down on the ground and sleep 25' away from one. I also learned I need a way to carry MORE water. My camelback was full, my 1 water bottle was full, but still I needed another 80 to 100 oz of water to complete my trip. I had to unpack my bike and ride BACK to the spring to filter and carry water in my now empty bags back to my camp site. I learned I need to do something different at night....the bivy bag might work but I can't have my face inside as the moisture will condense out onto the inside of the bag and then go right into my down sleeping bag. I think I need a small light 1 man tent. The bivy bag was a trial....likely not a great way to go. Maybe for a 1 or 2 nighter in decent weather...but it was down to around 40 during the night and that's pretty chilly in a 45 degree bag when it starts to get wet. I also learned my bike feels like the Queen Mary when I put 15lbs of stuff on it...but after a while you forget about it as it's still a bike and rides just fine, just a bit slower than usual. It's actually a GREAT way to go camping I discovered! You can cover a WHOLE LOT more ground than backpacking, that's for sure! Though I can carry more weight on my back. But the distance thing is pretty great. It would be 2 or 3 days each way to hike to where I was camping at with a backpack....I got there in a bit over 4 hours.

And so...that about wraps up my FIRST EVER Bike-packing trip! I hope to do another 1 nighter in 2 weeks (my last Friday off b efore the mission, and when I come back it will be getting pretty warm inland, likely NOT good camping weather.

OK. Gotta scoot...later gaters!

Cheers!