Trabuco Outdoors Blog

Wildflower season in the chaparral

It's been wildflower season in the local mountains for the last couple of months. The recent warm weather has prematurely ended the season for some of the wildflowers, but there are still a number of lupines, paintbrush, California blue bells, Mariposa lily, blue dicks blue-eyed grass, bush monkey flower and an occasional California poppy along Bell Ridge and Bell View trails. The shooting stars and chocolate lily were prolific on the Santa Rosa Plateau as I mentioned in my mid-March post, but I haven't been out there since.

Expect to see some of the later blooming flowers such as the bush poppy, Matilija poppy and Weed's Mariposa lily in the next month or so.

Wreckfinding in the Santa Ana Mountains - Part 1

 On my web page about exploring Yaeger Mesa, I asked that anyone with any details of the PT-19 wreckage email me, and I'd pass any information on to aircraft archeologist Pat Macha and his team of aircraft wreck finders. About two months ago, I received an email from Bob Pargee of San Clemente which included some personal memoirs including a hike he did in 1950 where he and his friends came across the wreckage the PT-19. Although badly damaged,  the aircraft's condition seemed to suggest it was a survivable crash. Apparently the PT-19 landed on the short mesa and came to an abrupt stop as it careened between two large trees which sheered off its wings and unleashed its engine from its mounts. The latest entry in a logbook found on the aircraft was 1949. Bob was also able to shed some light on why no engine was found in the wreckage remaining today.

I passed the information on to Pat Macha who appreciated Bob's help in pinning down the likely time of the crash to 1949 or 1950. Happily, Bob's account also confirmed Pat's belief that this was probably a nonfatal crash.In all likelihood, this was a war-surplus aircraft. While this information proved valuable to Pat's efforts to document the air crashes in the Santa Ana Mountains, it was another of Bob's memoirs which motivated Pat to mobilze his team of wreckfinders to search out a different and long sought-after crash site...

Wreckfinding in the Santa Ana Mountains - Part 2

Bob Pargee's second memoir mentions an aircraft wreck he and his buddies came across around 1950 or 1951. Large pieces of the aircraft, which he correctly believed was a Grumman F7F Tigercat, were located near a ridge line in a manzanita chaparral-covered area of the Santa Ana Mountains within the Cleveland National Forest. Based on Bob's description of the crash site location and description of the wreckage, Pat Macha believed this was the crash that killed World War II ace Capt. Wilbur J. "Gus" Thomas and Master Sgt. Morgan Hopwood in 1947. They were on a routine flight from San Diego to El Toro in bad weather when the aircraft appeared to hit less than 100 feet below the ridge line. Pat Macha had searched the vicinity for over two decades but was not able to locate the crash site until Bob described the location and pinpointed it on a Google Earth photo.

Last Sunday, Bob and I joined Pat Macha and his aircraft archeology team to search the area for confirmation that this was the same aircraft. Pat's son Patrick, also an experienced wreckfinder, had hiked up a couple of weeks earlier and found evidence of the crash. We managed to reach the trailhead about the time Sunday's storm reached its peak. Perhaps it was fitting that we arrived at the crash site during a storm with high winds, hail and rain; probably similar to the weather on the night of the crash. Pat and his crew found parts of the aircraft stamped with serial numbers confirming that it was Captain Thomas's aircraft. After years of searching, Pat finally located the crash site which claimed the lives of two brave Marines including a true American hero.

Here is the link to the article on the search from the Orange County Register.

Vernal eternal

Thanks to the Nature Conservancy, a few of the once-common vernal pools in southern California will forever remain undeveloped. This photo of the large pool was taken last week at the Santa Rosa Plateau. The main pool appears to be about 75% full right now, but I am not familiar enough with the pools to provide an accurate estimate. The best source will be Tom Chester's site once he updates it.

There are a number of wildflowers starting to bloom including the chocolate lily, shooting stars and California poppy. Also, there are mini-forests of poison oak (and wild cucumber) adjacent to the Trans Preserve trail. While driving home in the I-15 freeway, I noticed hillsides covered with what appeared to be California poppy.

Trabuco Sunsets

For me, sunsets are among the more challenging landscape scenes to photograph. The back lit nature of sunsets increases the risk of lens flare, and careful technique is required for proper exposure of the sky and the foreground (usually by using a graduated neutral density filter or combining two differently-exposed shots in Photoshop) . This photo was shot from Trabuco Creek Road near the Trabuco Flyers RC airport.

Brilliant sunsets require mid-level or higher clouds, and a clear horizon. When I'm trying to determine when conditions are likely to be favorable for sunset photography,I look at the aviation weather forecasts. The weather forecasts you get from network TV are too vague. It's not good enough to know that it will be partly cloudy; you need to have a sense of the height of the cloud bases. If you want to know more about where to find and decipher the aviation weather forecasts, go to this link.

Photographing rainbows

I was hiking up Bell Ridge Trail yesterday afternoon when it started raining. I don't mind hiking in the rain as long as I have a rain jacket (and chaps if I will be hiking off trail), but once I looked back and noticed a clear horizon, I knew there would be a rainbow once the sun moved below the clouds. I decided to go back to the flat area where Bell View Tail intersects with Bell Ridge Trail and wait to photograph it.

Rainbows  have a radius of 42 degrees from the antisolar point (the point opposite the sun), so you'll need a wide angle lens. A polarizer filter helps intensify the rainbow, but it can make it disappear if you aren't careful. If you do see a full rainbow, it may be best to shoot it twice, turning the polarizer 90 degrees after the first shot to intensify the rainbow and combine the two in post processing. That's what I did for this photo, but unfortunately the second (and subsequent) shots were ruined when rain got on the filter.  Also, the polarizer doesn't help control the reflections off the moisture on the shrubs in the foreground since the filter is most effective when used at a 90 degree angle to the sun, and least effective when shooting directly into or away from the sun. The other challenge when trying to shoot a full rainbow is keeping your shadow out of the photo since you are shooting directly opposite the sun. Rather than using a cable release, I put the camera in timer mode and moved so my shadow would be out of the scene.

Friday morning on the plateau

As usual, I started my hike on the Santa Rosa Plateau last Friday at the Vernal Pool Trailhead. It's a great place to start a sunrise hike since it starts at a higher elevation with nice views overlooking the oak woodland and rolling prairies to the northeast. Also, it provides several trail options including the Los Santos Trail and Trans Preserve Trail within a half mile of the trailhead. As expected, the vernal pools are shallow this early in the season.

One of the reasons I prefer the plateau for hiking is the variety of landscapes over a relatively small area. The vernal pools are less than a mile on a flat stretch from the trailhead, and after passing the pools, I continued on the trail decending through a section of chaparral and then down to the rolling grasslands surrounding the old adobes. After hiking the riparian Adobe Loop Trail, I prefer to continue to the east on the Punta Mesa Trail until continuing further east on Monument Trail to the secluded area adjacent to the closed Mesa de Burro section of the preserve. 

If you hike these trails in the early morning, you are virtually certain to see wildlife including deer, coyotes and the occasional bobcat. Based on the scat and tracks, it's not that there are fewer bobcats than coyotes; they just don't present themselves for viewing as often. The return to the Vernal Pool trailhead via the middle section of the preserve was through  grasslands which are dotted with Engelmann and live oaks. Here is a link to a more detailed description of the Santa Rosa Plateau and photos of the preserve.

Is something watching you?

I saw this mountain lion track this afternoon in the Trabuco wash about a half mile south of the Santa Margarita Parkway bridge. I guessed that it was the right front paw of a medium-sized cougar, then emailed the photo to tracker Dick Newell to get an expert's opinion. Dick is a naturalist and tracker for the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, and has a terrific web site: OCTrackers.com. Currently Dick is offering tracking classes for volunteer naturalists, rangers, animal control officers, as well as prior graduates of his basic tracking class. He plans on offering beginning tracking classes for the general public in the future, so keep an eye on his web site.

Now through the end of the rainy season is the best time for beginning trackers since tracks are often well-defined in the soft mud or damp sand of the washes. Don't forget to carry a small ruler or tape as standard equipment when you hike; they are a critical in identifying tracks. The experts can identify tracks on dry trails where we may not even notice a track, but that takes years of experience.

By the way, I was partially correct. It is likely the right rear foot of the mountain lion (aka cougar or puma) with a direct register over the right front foot of the animal. Both bobcats and mountain lions often place their rear foot directly where their front foot had been. This is know by trackers as "direct register." Sometimes you will see an indirect register as in this photo I took a few minutes later of a bobcat track. Notice how much smaller the bobcat's track is compared to the lion's.

A wet winter - so far...

The rainfall total for the first half of the rain season (July-December) was 6.54 in. in Trabuco Canyon (at least at my house in Robinson Ranch). This is well above the average 1st half rainfall for the last few years. If the trend continues, it should provide a good spring wildflower bloom as well as a reasonably long fishing season on Trabuco Creek once it's stocked in late January or early February.

Christmas in the foothills

The toyon is in full fruit now in our foothills. This is one of the most common shrubs in the Santa Ana Mountains, and grows up to about 25 or 30 feet tall in some cases. The berries, which are usually bright red (but sometimes yellow) are most prominent in December, hence the other common names Christmas berry and Christmas holly.

Toyon was a food source for the local Indians who would eat the berries, or boil them to make a cider-like drink.  Coyotes seem to enjoy the berries as well. Lore has it that Hollywood was named after this shrub, but I wonder. Scrub oak is as common as toyon in the Hollywood foothills, and to my eyes, has a more holly-like appearance than the serrated toyon leaves. In any case, Hollywood is probably better known today for its nuts than its berries.