50@50 – Big Sur, CA: 2 Hikes
The images of Big Sur are so iconic that one expects no surprises – like attending a performance of Beethoven’s ninth. The joy of actually BEING there is discovering that the reality of its landscape is so much more expansive that the few pictures one sees replicated over and over – just like Beethoven’s ninth – is impressively more interesting in its entirety, and in person, than the initial Du Du Du Dah.
Big Sur, an actual town, generally implies a 70-90 mile region south of Carmel. With a temperate climate and lush vegetation, the indigenous Esselen people lived here for about 6000 years prior to being absorbed into the Spanish mission system.[1]
Current culture dates back to the mid-nineteenth century and is the result of layers of beliefs and actions over time. As a result, Big Sur is much more than the sum of its coastal vistas. Until 1937, the area remained fairly isolated. Many early residents committed to keeping the area beautiful and accessible. The result are many state parks and beaches along the coast. Residences are virtually invisible from the road. A local woman I met said that many locals, do not have contemporary electricity. The use of solar panels and other “green” means of generating electricity is second generation here.
I stopped along many of the highway pull-outs which led to short coastal hikes including Garrapata and Julia Pfeiffer Burns state parks, as well as Jade Cove and Pfeiffer Beach. The diversity of plant life was astounding. Calla Lilies grow wild! Its magnificence was almost surreal, as if Dali will momentarily morph you into the landscape with a watch.
Much of Big Sur’s magical landscape is pictorially under represented, so on day 2, I pushed east into the Ventana Wilderness to hike. I was unprepared for its intensely gradient green mountains, with V-shaped gulches offering 237 mils of trails with 55 camps. The Pine Ridge Trail, a multi-day tour of the wilderness, is popular, but I chose to just hike the first four miles up (yep, it’s pretty much up all the way, but levels off after that for three more miles). With a lot of water breaks, it took a little less than two and a half hours up, but less than two hours to come down. Like San Francisco, July and August are often foggy, so the views are less (or more, depending on your viewpoint) dramatic.
By hiking into the wilderness as well as the coast, by talking with locals and experiencing the charms of local hang outs, I see how early settlers were transformed by the landscape creating a culture of reverence for nature.
[1] Substantial ambiguity and discrepancy exists in public literature about the survival of their culture and descendants