Jim Preston, trail lead with the Ventana Wilderness Alliance, wrote in the other day to say the Los Padres National Forest and Ventana Wilderness will open May 1 (except for the Pine Ridge Trail, which still has major fire damage).
Best source for Ventana hikers is www.ventanawild.org. Updates on the Pine Ridge Trail here. (And you can find some hints on Big Sur redwoods hiking in this thread).
I’ve linked to this before, I suspect, but what the heck: great ghost stories of the Ventana,
Hmmm,
The Ventana is someplace that I would really like to get back to. I think that it has only been twenty years since I last hiked in from the Arroyo Seco side. As much as I like the Diablo Range, I like the Ventana more.
Got to the VW about 40 minutes after the closure lifted Friday morning. 🙂
Quick morning summit of Junipero Serra before it started pouring in the afternoon.
http://www.fedak.net/albums/JuniperoPostIndian.html
Always interesting to see the rapid progress of burn recovery after coastal CA fires.