Rattlesnake Canyon

Our hike at Rattlesnake Canyon was to be our final hike during our week long trip to Santa Barbara and it ended up being our longest outing.  We parked on the street along Las Canoas Road, adjacent to Skofield Park.

We headed north through the canyon and encountered more people than we were expecting.  It was a Saturday, but we thought the rougher terrain would mean fewer people.  The path was the most technical we had encountered than any of our other hikes this week.  It was not really hard, but the rocky, twisting, uneven terrain did require more careful foot placement than the more level paths we had become more accustomed to during the week.

Despite the dry conditions and dusty creekbed for some of its length, the creek here and there managed to maintain a flow of water in spots.  Some of the small waterfalls even provided some nice background noise in spots.

Looking at maps online, our plan was to hike an ambitious balloon loop that would deposit us along a high ridge even higher than nearby Inspiration Point.  At the point in our hiking map marked "Turnaround" we found the trail that was supposed to run along that ridge was practically impassible.  There was a trail of sorts there but the effort required to continue pushing through the brush would have been exhausting.  We elected to drop back down to the "real" trail and continue back the way we came up.

Though we did not make it to the top of the ridge the views at this turnaround spot proved to be every bit as inspirational as those at the nearby hotspot.  We could actually see Inspiration Point beneath us from this higher vantage point.

Doubling back was a little confusing at times since it was not always clear which forks we should take.  In many cases we had not noticed that some other trail segment had merged into ours.  We followed a few folks who seemed to know what they were doing and made it back to the trailhead without any issues.

At no time did we see any Rattlesnakes in the canyon.  We had no complaints about that false advertising.  :-)