Our kayaks already loaded from our predawn plans we suited up quickly and scrambled down to the Sespe just below the confluence of Tule Creek around 3 PM, it had already been a long day but it was great to get on the water.
The Sespe is a famous among expert Southern California boaters. Run probably only a dozen or two times since it was first done in 1984, it is one of the best runs in the state but barely known to most.
The only access to the Sespe is a single road and a few trails. During this winter strong El Nino storms caused a massive landslide on this road closing it and isolating several small communities on the other side. The news in the spring was that the road would be closed until at least the end of the summer. This had dashed my hopes that the Sespe would be a possibility for this year, and as summer arrived such thoughts were further diminished as things dried out in the region. However, where there is a will there is a way. And when we heard that another group had been able to do the Sespe several weeks earlier by driving past the road closed signs in the middle of the night and that there was plenty of water, we were convinced that this would be a good memorial day weekend adventure.
Originally it was going to be five of us on the trip, including Lynne Siodmak and Chris Nybo. Chris had been in the group that had just done it and had sacrificed his boat to a kayak eating boulder. He was eager to go back. For this trip we would try something different. Instead of driving in in the middle of the night and getting dropped off, we would drive in before dawn thereby avoiding one extra night of camping and the associated unpacking and packing of our kayaks.
We hit our first problem when sunlight arrived just a little too early and it was light by the time we got to the road closure gates. Someone was already there turning people away and no amount of cajoling was going to get us past those gates. The gatekeeper franticly started to yell "hey pull over, get to the side quickly!" huh, why, but as soon as we did a large truck came barreling by us at 50. "These trucks or going in and out of here real fast all day, you can't be on this road". We were glum - the weekend plans for a great adventure had collapsed and we really had no plan B. So we drove back down to Ventura to Tom's house. We talked about the possibility of going back that night and doing it late - but we were worried that memorial day weekend would bring on extra security.
In the end Tom, Rocky, and I decided that we would go off and find out what we could do for the day, and then maybe head north into the Sierras for the rest of the weekend, or maybe come back to Ventura for another shot at the Sespe that night. By 10am we found ourselves looking at the outflow of the Sisquoc and the Cuyama rivers as potential. Rocky wanted to do the Sisquoc, another multiday wilderness run that had been done for the first time only this winter. Tom and I were leaning more towards a one day run on the upper Cuyama. Looking at these rivers brought us to the other side of route 33, the same road that was closed at Ventura leading to the Sespe. As we were driving up it, I said "Why don't we just drive up a little further and see what the road closure is like from this side?". So up we went, passed the unmanned road closure. Maybe the Sespe was still a possibility!?
As we drove up the winding road, we remembered that we had promised to call Lynne later in the day to let her know what our plans were. I tried in vain to get a signal on the cell phone - no luck. Tom was worried about vaporizing for three days without telling anyone where we were. We continued on up and were able to drive nearly right up to the landslide. To see this slide eliminated any question as to why the road had been closed for months. The entire hillside for nearly a third of a mile had slid down and burried the road. Bulldozers and large dump trucks crawled around it like ants. We tried to convince several other daring tourists who had driven past the road closure sign to drive our car back out to a place that would easier to pick it up at the end of the run - but we found no takers. We did find some people who were willing to call Lynne with a message from us. But there was still the problem of the car, we had been warned by a couple officials who came to work on the slide that if a sherrif or caltrans cop comes by we'd get a $350 ticket, and I didn't want to think what they would do if we left a car parked there 3 days. But we were so close, the Sespe was there flowing just a few feet away from the road. Then Tony came to the rescue. Tony is a resident of the small cluster of houses and ranches on this side of the slide that has been cut off from Ventura. To get to work, he has a car that he keeps on the Ventura side of the slide, and to get home he has to walk around the slide and have someone pick him up. "Hey, would you be willing to drive my car down?" I ask. "Sure" he replied much to our elation. Things just kept happening in our favor!
Our kayaks already loaded from our predawn plans we suited up quickly and scrambled down to the Sespe just below the confluence of Tule Creek around 3 PM, it had already been a long day but it was great to get on the water.
I was expecting to scrape down much of the upper section as the flow here was very low, but by picking the right channel we were able to stay in our boats most of the time, getting out a couple times to find a way through the lines of willows. We made our way pretty quickly down the first 5 or 6 miles to Lion's Camp which is the standard put in. Pleasant canyon scenery provided regular distractions from the shallow rocks that were always ready to stop and broach you. Pushing on past Lion's Camp it was great to have the setting sun at our backs, a rarity in California where you are more often paddling west or south. Around 8 PM the wonderful golden light finally dimmed to a grey and we pulled over to make camp at a nice long sandbar at a bend just above willet hot springs. There was no shortage of firewood and we enjoyed our meal around the campfire.
That night I heard something rustling around in my stuff near my sleeping bag. Probably a mouse is what I thought. I sat up and let my eyes adjust to the starlight. There was a dark shape on top of one of my bags that I didn't recognize and it didn't move. Hmmm, I reached out to touch it and it was soft like a cold leather bag of jelly, what the heck was it. I reached over and grabbed my headlamp and turned it on to reveal a huge frog sitting happily on my stowfloat next to my sleeping bag. He just sat there and didn't seem to mind me or the light. Not wanting him to hop in to bed with me later in the night I picked him up and tossed him into the sand several feet away, where I could tell by his tracks in the morning he had hopped back off into the grasses