Forbush Flat Hike

This is more of a trail review than a pure photography post but I just don't have time to write something new before I fly to Alaska... Haha, yep, I'm going to Alaska!!!!

As usual, click on the pictures to see full size and the rest of the gallery. Or skip the whole reading thing and checkout all the pictures here.

After reading about all sorts of trails, I settled for an overnighter at Forbush Flat to enjoy the Perseid meteor shower. The only issue with this is that the timing of the meteor shower is set like a clock and peaks every year around August 12th. Well, August 12th in the Santa Barbara mountains is quite the furnace…

Nonetheless, based on the fact that most of the hike is shaded, that the forecast convinced me it would be 85deg max and that there should be water flowing year long (at least people going there in July said there was water), I decided to go forward and plan my overnighter here with my girlfriend.

It was the first time I hiked this trail; I thought it was in good condition.

Forbush Flat trail condition

There are a few places where you get “free-bush-exfoliation” and a couple others places with steep sideways incline in loose gravel but nothing insurmountable. We hiked the 2 miles down in the dead of the heat (between 1pm and 2pm), my watch thermometer, on my wrist, stayed stuck between 98deg and 105deg the whole time. Despite the heat, the hike was enjoyable and pretty shaded. The views at certain points were nice but I wouldn’t qualify them as breathtaking. It’s too bad that gigantic power line goes through the landscape.

Forbush Flat trail scenery

The camp spots were empty and in good shape. The table at the lower spot, where we stayed, is pretty worn out but very usable. One of its benches could probably get replaced. There was absolutely no water flowing in the creek. I hiked up the creek a little bit and found a small pool of clear stagnant water, no bigger than a small bathtub. Without that and the water filter, we’d be pretty dried out. There was also an uncomfortable amount of bugs. Enough that we went through a whole bug repellent container.

There was nobody to be found all day, who would hike down there in the middle of a hot summer day! Well us I guess. The hike description was a tiny bit confusing as you reach the campsites before your reach the rusty sign with the junction for the Blue Canyon trail; unless I was disoriented I guess.

After setting camp and hanging out a little, we decided to hike the 2 miles down to the Santa Ynez river and refill our bottles with some fresh water down there. We headed down the trail, which was pretty much in the same condition as the one to get down to the campsites. After a mile or so, we started seeing pools of sitting water, some clearer than others.

Stagnant water on the way to the Santa Ynez River

That’s when I realized I had forgotten the water filter at the campsite; we were down to our last liter of water. Now, I’m not completely unprepared as it might sound throughout the description: I did have some iodine pills. Knowing where the pools were to refill, we went a little further to try to find the actual flowing river. After hitting another dry hill, still not seeing the river and not being sure where we were heading or how far we were, I decided to head back to the pools where I knew we’d find some water. A little dip, a little iodine nasty tasting water and we were back in business. We then headed back to camp. I looked at the map today, and we stopped about 0.3 miles from the actual river.

Back at the camp, I filled the jug (the one that lives at the campsites) with water from the tiny pool up the creek and we started filtering. Oh what a pleasure to taste something that was filtered and not just sterilized by a life saving pill. We also played a little taking pictures of the sunset.

Forbush Flat sunset

Forbush Flat sunset

Portrait silhouette

Portrait silhouette again, but better... right?

And frolicked in the field.

Frolicking in the Forbush Flat fields

A group of about 15 mid-20’s people showed up right after sunset and set camp in the upper site. They were partying and extremely loud, playing music, singing, laughing, screaming until late in the night; living basically. Honestly, it didn’t bother us a bit but I’d understand people could be deeply annoyed by this. After seeing a few meteors and played with light painting, we headed to bed.

Perseid meteor shower

Light painting

Even without the youngsters, the wildlife night was pretty loud. Some animal stayed around our tent digging through stuff pretty much until the morning. We had our tent set up without the rainfly so we could actually see some meteors through the trees, which was quite enjoyable. The tent is pretty much all mesh, I slept in my underwear and only needed the quilt in the middle of the night just because of a tiny breeze. I would’ve been just as happy with a shirt on.

We left camp at 9 the next morning because I was slow to pack, being tired from the little sleep I had both because of the animal digging around and my stomach not happy with the iodine water. We were at the car by 10:15 or so, drenched in sweat from the uphill hike in the heat. At least half of the hike was in the shade though.

I will definitely be going back but better prepared and not in August. Many lessons were learnt, whether about hiking in the heat, expecting to have water at the camp, timing the hike, etc. But heading there somewhat early in the day, setting camp then go check out the cascading pools (with flowing water) on the trail to the Santa Ynez river seems like an attractive idea to me.

Also, don’t overlook the fact that the hike is downwards on the way there and up on the way back. It’s definitely not a flat hike so even if 2 miles sounds easy, it’s still somewhat of a workout especially in the heat.

You can find the original details for the hike here.

Slackline fun in challenging light

Who in the right mind would buy a nylon line to stretch between a couple trees, attempt to balance on it only to faceplant over and over again? Well me! As a matter of fact, I even bought 2 of these wrist-breaking-setups by mistake since my supposedly infallible memory decided to fail on me...again.

Slacklining is actually a great core workout: it tests your balance, provides a cardio workout (if you keep falling and climbing back on at least) and works most muscles in your body. All of that is accomplished while you try not to break a bone….and it’s fun! Details…

Anyhow, it also creates good opportunities for fun pictures as you can see here:

Nameless Scott chicken-winging it on the slackline

I won’t mention the guy’s name out of respect, but his expression and body language are the best example of funny pictures you can produce. Sorry Scott. Oh…

As far as photography technique goes, this was a challenging lighting condition (around 3:30pm on a sunny day). The direction in which you shoot is very important. Shoot straight towards the sun, and your subjects just become those dark silhouettes in front of a bright background. Shoot your subjects in the shade with sunlight background, and you get a similar effect. The latter is more manageable, but you still get a dark subject in front of a bright background:

Gabe balancing on the slackline

The best compromise I found that day was to shoot the subjects in the shade with relatively shaded backgrounds (using the rest of the trees as a background rather than the open field).

Jen getting ready to climb on the slackline

This results in patchy lighting, but that’s what I thought was the best alternative. You can use a flash to fill in the shadows, but I was shooting in burst mode so the flash wouldn’t have been able to keep up.

I shot in burst mode because most of these are action shots:

Gabe about to eat it on the slackline

I won’t hide the fact that I was hoping for people to fall to make good snaps, but (un)fortunately that didn’t happen too much. I shot all of this with a wide angle 24mm lens at 1/500th of a second in shutter priority mode, and auto ISO (set at 100). The camera chose apertures between f/2.8 and f/4.

One mistake I made was to assume that I could just leave the camera on the side for other people to shoot with while I was playing on the slackline. The mistake was in my assumption that everyone there knew how to use my camera, and the fact that I left the camera in 1 spot autofocus mode instead of fully automatic. Therefore, when someone else picked up the camera to shoot, very rarely was the focus point on the subject.  It often ended up on the trees in the back, resulting in a large amount of blurred pictures such as this one of me superman-ing it:

Myself trying to fly away from the slackline

Nevertheless, Scott was able to get a couple good shots, framed nicely and focused appropriately:

Ah now we have a nice shot of the slackline (though I should be out of the frame on the right)

Very nice expression Laura

Bottom line, shooting when the sun is straight up will be more challenging than you think…it can create harsh lighting with very bright and very dark spots. Use your surroundings to compensate the best you can for this, such as darker backgrounds with shade on your subject. Lastly, make sure your camera is set-up for anyone to use if that is ever your intent. Don’t assume that people will understand (without explanation) where the focus point is.

Go out and shoot! Oh, and don't get hurt on those lines, it's easy to not land on your feet!

Guillaume