The Figueroa Mountain area is rightfully one of our region’s most popular recreation destinations, but total solitude is easily found in a shaded canyon beneath its flowered slopes. The steep La Jolla Spring Trail to Ballard Camp, which descends beneath Zaca Peak and Lookout Mountain to a lush canyon stream, is probably a Figueroa hiker’s best bet for finding alone time this side of the San Rafael Wilderness boundary.
The hike begins across from Tunnell Road on a grassy oaken hill and goes one direction: down. In its 1,040-foot descent over 1.8 miles, the serpentine-speckled terrain passes from golden grass to a festival of wildflowers, which even in late season is still vibrant with yellows, reds, and purples. Between the corridors of clarkia, poppy, and Indian paintbrush dance checkerspot butterflies, as hawks screech between the pines above. One is afforded a view of Birabent Canyon, a stark desert-like environment striated with streaks of red rocks. Though not quite as dramatic as other regional riparian canyons, the slanting stripes of sandstone give it the same sense of sacred geometry rippling across our Transverse Ranges.
The trail bottoms out at Birabent Creek, where one is transported to a world completely different than the barren one above. The temperature drops, the sycamores and willows slow the pulse. A deer and her two fawns cautiously greet before traveling uphill. Wildlife is far more common down here than people. Along the creek appear gopher snakes and fence lizards, jays and sparrows, sooty dancers and serpent ringtails, carpet beetles and boxelder bugs, even elusive bobcats. A pair of turkey vultures take turns to roost and hunt in tandem overhead.