Romero Canyon Single Track Receives a Facelift

I cannot believe that they destroyed the Romero Canyon Trail on Tuesday, long after it made any sense in terms of fighting the Zaca fire. That was one of the finest stretches of single-track anywhere, and your description of the state in which it was left leaves me beside myself with grief (and anger) over this senseless act. WTF?

I believe the Romero Trail was recaptured several days before this past Tuesday. (It is, by the way, an old Forest Service Road from the 1970 that was simply reclaimed. I guess the Forest Service giveth and the Forest Service taketh away). I was there last Friday (See Montecito Montage, August 18) and dozer and hand crews were hard at work.

At that time a backfiring operation was planned for along the Pendola Jeepway to the Santa Ynez Riverbed, right behind Montecito. Fortunately the firing was scrubbed, but on Friday the road was being prepared to provide access for fire crews, just in case the backburn went awry and crews had to move either from or to Camino Cielo.

I like that trail, and I believe they just cleared brush the bottom (no dozers) to create a one-car access. However, given the options at the time, the recapture was, in my non-professional opinion, the best and safest strategy. I believe Montecito Trails Foundation concurred.

It is too bad it has been left in a mess, but maybe its clean up is something we can take on as a community project. I think we might have more tender touch towards its restoration and personally, I think it is time to let the Fed and State crews go home--with a big thank you, of course!

Nitz, get over it. The whole backcounty is a mess and you're whining over a couple miles of old road that got overgrown to the point it was just a trail when the Forest Service closed the road. I last drove down that stretch in the mid-70's. My only hope is that they can keep the downhill crazies off the new road so normal folk can enjoy the access.

I rode Romero to the trail intersection on Wed and while Ray is correct saying there are debris and rocks all over, for the most part I did not think it was any worse than it was before, but has the potential for being much better. I did have to stop frequently and throw tree limbs and cuttings over the edge, and there were still plants that should be trimmed back as they now protrude into the trail since it is wider, but I was also one of the first riders through so I expected there to be issues. With all of the looseness of the rocks/debris, now is the perfect time to grab some shovels and as J'Amy says make a community project to clean it up in a friendly manner. I know that many people will continue to complain that the single rack is gone, but living close to Romero I frequently hear the helicopters hovering in the canyon trying to find the latest victim that has gone over the edge, and this is a major step to reducing those occurrences. To anyone heading up there to ride (or hike), take a set of pruning shears and a shovel if possible and lets start the rehab!

Nitz - You seem to forget you are writing with the benefit of hindsight. Would your post have been the same had structures been destroyed or lives lost?

Be thankful the trail you enjoy remains usable.

.......................This season.......................

Sadly, for those of us with a few grey hairs, we will not likely return to many trails and camps in our backpacking lifetimes.

Whether hiking or biking, a nice attractive singletrack is much preferred to a wide roadway. This is a shame. You might as well be walking an urban street.

I agree with 'torotoro', when saying it is our responsiblity to police and care for our own trails. LOOK PEOPLE! If we rely on the Government to care for evey little thing, we'll end up like the Katrina Hurricane people, left in the dark. The old trail is cleared for safety and acess to an area that is prone to fire disaster every summer. If we as lovers of the outdoors have a problem with the way the trail was left, we should take care of its condition ourselves or at least contact the Forest Service and/or the Sierra Club and offer to assist in the care of our beloved trails. It's our right and duty to persue a solution to our trails and NOT just whine like babies over what we should have been doing all this time, caring for our own.

Ray's article states that "when the containment line was finished in Pendola, the fire danger to the front side of the mountains was no longer there." To me, this means that the Romero Road operation was completed after such an action was necessary to fight the Zaca fire. And officials at Live Oak Camp said, "We don't use dollars from one fire to prepare for or fight the next one."

My guess is that the road was reclaimed because the project could be slam-dunked if they acted while the fire was burning. Timing it the way they did, they got to avoid controversy concerning environmental impacts (think of the silt that will be washed into Romero Creek as a result of this long scar), funding, and the concerns of the interested public. It's an action that can be defended by alluding to its necessity in fighting the fire, even if some of us don't buy that excuse.

Give it ten years, and nature will make the trail single-track again, and life will go on. In the meantime, I expect that the downhillers will find the widening to be conducive to faster riding, and that this will likely result in more conflicts with other users. The horse people have been trying to get the mountain bikers off this trail for some time. Don't be surprised if some incident resulting from these speed-friendly improvements gives them the push that they need.

I was amazed at how many dozer lines I could see in the back country from east camino cielo when the fire was "almost" contained in late July. I was kind of feeling like Nitz in that they cut lines miles and miles from the fire at the same time they were sending firefighters home. Much to my amazement, the fires were buring up to these lines less than a week later. Had they not cut all those contingency lines, my house could be toast right now (and Peachtree would be). The size and speed at which this fire moved at times was unbelieveable. That they stopped it at all is a testiment to the skill of our firefighters and their commanders. I say better safe than sorry. I don't even want to think what would have happened had this monster gotten loose in the front country.

We hiked up the Romero Trail (not the road) two weeks ago when the fire was really going strong. From there we could see the fire and the fire fighters at the water tank on Romero Saddle. It seems logical to me that they reopen the trail since that's where the water tank is. Those whining about the poor shape of the trail (AKA road) must be forgetting all those nasty slides that were just plowed away. So now the road is a road again. Anyone with any local history knows that there will be more slides and there will be more scrub growing on the roadside. Let's use this as an opportunity to build a multi-use trail. Are bikers like Nitz and others saying that they don't like multi-use trails? Either the community will turn it into a model multi-use trail OR nature will have her way with it and it will be similar to the way that it was before. What's the problem either way? There is far more destruction to focus on in the backcountry with the loss of 230,000 acres than to worry that an old road is a road again.

There was a lot of destruction in World War II, also. But that doesn't mean that it would've made sense to bomb Paris in August 1944.

Multi-use trails are fine. I just don't like to see prized single-track needlessly destroyed. There's no need for that.

What's done is done. I'm betting nature will reclaim the road once more.

Hmmmm... having mtnbiked/hiked Romero over the last 30 years: I've witnessed many slides take place, the brush grown thicker, damaging bike riding techniques, a friend go over the edge and steadily increased use. Yes, I will miss the shady cool sections of the singletrack (aka old road) past the powerlines. But with a little TLC, our community has the opportunity to make the best out of it. Because eventually, 'ol Mother Nature will do her thing and the slides will still happen and the brush will still grow. But I would like to see the FService do some rehab work and there's probably some grant money floating around out there.