A long weekend out of Nira, up the Manzana to the Narrows, then a big climb into the high country and the pine forest around Mission Pine Spring before dropping back down to the trailhead. Three days, a lot of solitude, and more wildflowers and pollinators than I could keep up with.
Day 1: Nira to Manzana Narrows
An afternoon start from Nira, working up-canyon to the Narrows. I was genuinely surprised by how empty it was — by nightfall it was just me and one other solo backpacker the whole place to ourselves. I scavenged a little driftwood from the creek, built a small fire in the existing ring, and settled in with the first pages of Why Fish Don't Exist as the canyon went dark.
Day 2: Up to Mission Pine Spring
The big day. At the first creek crossing I met a guy who generously talked me through the Big Cone Spruce trail: bushwhacky through the first stretch, then steep above Big Cone Spruce Camp, with reliable water at McKinley Spring and again up at Mission Pine Spring. Good intel to have before committing to the climb. (My recording split partway through the day — both halves are stitched together here as a single track.)
Up at McKinley Saddle, the trail register showed Joko Widodo had signed in ahead of me, so I spent a good chunk of the climb half-expecting to round a switchback and meet the legend himself. The miles were full of small things: gathering acorns along the fire road, stopping to watch pollinators of every kind work the brush, pausing just to stand in the smell of the ceanothus in bloom, and crouching over a set of faint bear tracks in the dust. I walked past oaks quietly regenerating almost twenty years on from the Zaca Fire.
Above 6,000 feet the pine forest was the payoff — open, cool, and quiet. I made camp on a south-facing overlook and got a moonlit night with faint views of Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands floating out past the Santa Ynez Range.
Day 3: Return to Nira
Almost all downhill — the one exception being the early-morning climb back up from Mission Pine Spring to San Rafael Peak to start the day. From there it was a long descent, dropping down through a thick deck of clouds parked between about 5,000 and 4,000 feet, then out the canyon and back to Nira.