Years 6 of the Tour de Los Padres Bikepacking Route

Boulder Canyon Trail is a hard climb from Ozena!

The Tour de Los Padres, a multi-day bikepacking route in Southern California scouted by Erin Carroll has moved from being a newcomer to an established event. 2020 is its 6th year! I wrote up reports for the first two years, but not since. 2014 TDLP report  2015 Second TDLP

Until this year, it was a point-to-point bikepacking route from Frazier Park to Santa Barbara mostly through the Los Padres National forest (with excursion into the Carrizo Plain and the Temblor Range). For 2020, Erin created a 400+ km loop. Los Padres 2020 loop  

Covid-19 ended any plans for a group event or grand depart for 2020. In fact, during the most promising time, the "shelter in place" order discouraged any travel that would require going to stores. However, backcountry trails and camps were open and Obin and I went for an overnighter to check out the new route parts in clockwise direction from Frazier Park to Santa Barbara. 

New Trails for 2020

There was still a lot of snow in April and we did not go to the top of Mt Pinos (in any event, not a new trail, but a great single track). Even the paved road to Mt Pinos was closed at the bottom. 

Instead, we took the horse trail, connected with Lockwood Valley road, and then onto the dirt roads/trail that were new to us. The nice surprise was that the gates to the dirt roads were locked, no motorized traffic. That presumably was still the winter closure (there were no Covid signs or alerts anywhere in that area). In any event, the time of year to do this stretch is before it is opened to ATVs, which is probably May 1. 

Lockwood Creek

Lockwood creek, shortly afterwards starts a very steep rocky climb, the Miller Jeep Trail

Overall a fairly rocky stretch with very steep ups and downs and we took a break at the top. This whole section is open to motos at other times of the year, so not smooth single track but rough jeep trail.  

I liked the second half a lot, the Yellowjacket Trail. It is a surprise, looks like there is no way out without substantial climbing, but then there is a hidden way. Also plenty of water around here at this time of year even though this has the feeling of a dry section otherwise. Still slow going, but it isn't long before we get spit out onto Lockwood Valley road and that is a long pavement stretch, up to Ozena Fire Station. At the fire station, we get off onto real hiking-type single track, the Boulder Canyon Trail. It starts nice, but becomes a very tough push. Unfortunately, we also managed to start this in the afternoon on a fairly warm day. 

Up Boulder Canyon Trail

Break time, which is needed as this climb takes several hours! I suspect it is the single hardest climb on the route in the clockwise direction. Even though it looks green, water is getting sparse. Very different from the previous stretch, which looks dry and yet has water everywhere. There is water at the bottom in the creek, but then it gets sparse. There is supposedly McGuire spring part way up and not far from the trail, but friends who went hiking a few weeks later said it was terrible (we didn't look for it ourselves). 

The top had snow, but no water. This connects to Reyes Peak and there is a road. The car parking campgrounds were closed, here because of Covid rather than seasonal closure. It was getting dark and very windy. And after a hot afternoon, now we were cold! We dropped down a bit to Chorro Springs, which was more sheltered and also had water. No longer flowing, just a pool, but the water was still fine. Certainly good enough for the night.

Camping at Chorro Grande

But we rolled down the Chorro Grande trail early in the morning to have breakfast at Oak, which has better water - a nice running creek. 

Chorro Grande trail early in the morning

Chorro Grande Trail

Chorro Grande ends on Highway 33. We saw some cars parked there, but only one hiker near the road. Otherwise, we hadn't seen anybody since leaving pavement the previous afternoon. While this is a long stretch on a road, it also goes very fast this direction (presumably a little bit slower the other direction, but it wouldn't be much of a climb) and it was pretty in the morning and almost traffic-free. 

Near Rose Valley, the climbing starts again. Not easy, but nothing like Boulder Canyon. 

Eventually, we are up on Nordhoff Ridge and then comes the spectacular descent into Ojai, mostly Gridley Trail

The afternoon got somewhat frustrating. It was an unusually hot day, somehow we had picked about the hottest day in April and in one of the hottest sections of the route. Just getting around Ojai (we didn't go into the town, but stayed around the trails around it) was tough - and I also managed to bend my derailleur. It got worse.

Our plan was to camp in the upper Santa Ynez area and the next morning do Romero to Santa Barbara and get picked there. There is a paved road to the Matilija trailhead, but as we got there, a grumpy local yelled at us, claiming this is closed to bicycles and there is no way through. Tempers were running high there (temperature and Covid?), he was also complaining about cars being parked, people in the creek. As we stood there (I also tried to straighten out my derailleur), two sheriff cars arrived. They waved friendly at us, apparently these two cyclists weren't the problem (it might have been nude bathers?), but we decided to better get away from there and returned on pavement to get picked up in Ojai a day early. 

So not entirely successful, but still good to be out during strange times.