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As the sun’s warmth burnt off the dreary Sunday morning fog of Valentine’s Day Weekend, the green hills beckoned, but I knew if I wanted to hike, I would have to drive.
The Santa Maria neck of the Central Coast isn’t really known for having lots of wide-open public land to check out. At least not “close” to town. But, there is a trail that the Los Padres National Forest started maintaining around 2012, and it’s close (I use that term loosely) enough to town to make a morning or afternoon hike possible. And, having a beer on the way home on the deck at the Santa Maria Brewing Company, after the 4- or 5-mile hike is the perfect way to round out the mini daytrip.
If you follow the green and yellow rolling hills east from Nipomo/Santa Maria on Highway 166, passing mustard, fiddleneck, lupin, and poppy blooms along the way, out past the Tepesquet Road junction, out past the Pine Canyon Fire Station, along the eastbound lane, about 18 miles from the Highway 101 junction, there’s a long, relatively unmarked turnout. It looks almost like any other turnout along the highway: gravelly with barbed wire fencing that leads to a gate with a cattle grate on the other side of it.
I would have missed it if it weren’t for the van that had just pulled through the gate with the same goal in mind—hiking the Willow Spring trail. This gate is the only one that doesn’t have a “private property” or “no trespassing” sign on it. But it does have a small yellow sign that indicates this is forest service land. The gate looks like it’s locked, and while it is during some parts of the year, it wasn’t on Feb. 21. If you open the gate and drive through it, closing it behind you, you can park in a shotgun-shell riddled parking area next to the Willow Spring trailhead.
The trail makes its way up the grass-covered hill at the southwestern edge of the open area, past sagebrush, oak trees, and a sprinkling of the purple/pink flowers of wild onions. It starts switch-backing next to a shady, old oak with a bench below it, and continues up to the old Highway 166 trail. The trail picks up on the other side of that wide dirt road.
At the top of the first rise, you can look east into Los Padres and along Highway 166. Fields of white and pink shooting stars interspersed with budding oak trees. The trail meanders upward, chasing a barbed wire fence, overlooking the mountains at the southern edge of Carrizo Plains National Monument.
At about the 2-mile mark, we went through a cattle gate, the landscape started changing, and we pushed straight up an incline, which opened into a grassy meadow. It was quiet, hot, and a brew sounded good, so we rested in the shade before heading back the way we came.
Melody Fountain with the Forest Service said the point we stopped at is where the trail flattens out, and you come to a sort of fork. The path to the right leads down to the spring. “Trail users can continue approximately another mile and make a circle or turn around to avoid private property,” she wrote in an email. Fountain also emphasized that all the gates should remain closed to prevent cattle from getting out onto the highway or into areas where they shouldn’t be.
“If the gate at the trailhead is locked, the trail is probably closed due to wet conditions,” she continued.
If you look at the forecast, there’s no danger of wet conditions anytime soon, and there are more wildflowers in store for the coming weeks. But without rain, the green hills of Los Padres won’t stick around very long, so if you’re into wildflowers and don’t mind trying to avoid the ticks—or picking them off your dog—get off your couch and get outside.
Managing Editor Camillia Lanham likes to think she’s pretty outdoorsy. Contact her at clanham@santamariasun.com.
PHOTOS BY CAMILLIA LANHAM
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 5, 2015.