Brush Peak

The beautiful Santa Barbara Channel and Channel Islands over the popular hike, The Lizard’s Mouth, on a blustery day

5 MARCH 2022 W6/SC-171

Full write-up to follow. Stay tuned…

My brother and I set out at a leisurely pace about 8:30 am from my Mom’s house in Malibu. The weather forecast called for a 50% chance of snow flurries, but this storm seemed to come in to the north and south of us. We only had a few drops of rain on the way up. It was a blustery and cold day.

The road up from San Marcos Pass and Highway 154 (West Camino Ceilo) is narrow but paved and suitable for passenger vehicles. The traverse from the Brush Peak roadhead over to Santa Ynez Peak we found to be pretty rough and is not recommended for anything but high clearance vehicles as Ron K6CPR noted in the previous write-up. Santa Ynez can be accessed with passenger vehicles that has only a short section of dirt road ant the end by way of the west via Refugio Pass and West Camino Cielo. Doing both peaks that way would entail a lot of driving. We made it a loop with my Tacoma, Whitedog.

The “hike,” such as it is, is pretty easy. We parked in front of the Winchester Canyon Gun Club and headed down the Lizard’s Mouth trailhead. A few hundred yards past the trailhead the route angles up to the right over some interesting sedimentary slabs and a fairly well established use trail leads to the summit. The hike is about a quarter mile and took us about 15 minutes.

The summit affords a nice view of the Lizard’s Mouth, the Santa Barbara Area and the Channel Islands. I only set up the HF station and didn’t even try 2 meters as wanted to activate Santa Ynez Peak as well.