My colleague Shaman Ryan and I arrived at Nira Trailhead at 6:45 a.m., and in the next photo you can observe him in a blue jacket as he assesses how to cross the Manzana without suffering wet boots and feet.Īssessing Manzana Creek in May. In wet winters, sometimes the weak Manzana morphs into a river, not the intermittent stream or creek we usually enjoy.Įight-foot-high stream debris. In January, it would be near-certain death to try fording the Manzana when you’re trudging in this protected federal wilderness zone of more than 200,000 acres.
The second photograph reveals an area I enjoyed bushwhacking through during a recent mid-May hike, and shows that in mid-January the gushing Manzana surged at least 8 feet above those stones. Forest Service on the roads and the Los Padres Forest Association volunteer trail crews, none of us ordinary citizen users would be able to reach even the trailheads, much less begin hiking along human footpaths. The surging Upper Manzana Creek rushes noisily through the chaparral landscape you see in the lead photograph - a few giant sycamores stand forth against the flood, but much of the former trail has been wiped out in these January-March rainstorms (4.1.1.
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