SOLITUDE on Santa Rosa

Summer 2008

Paddling California's Channel Islands

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

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by Chuck Graham

The bugle call bellowed from above the ridgeline, disturbing my deep slumber where I was tucked away in a gritty alcove. Startled, I sat straight up in my sleeping bag, fumbling for my headlamp. My eyes soon adjusted with the benefit of a full moon, and I watched the rangy silhouette of a Roosevelt elk loping across rugged Santa Rosa Island.

There’s one campground on each of the five islands in the Channel Islands National Park off the coast of California, and on Santa Rosa, the second largest island in the archipelago, beach camping is allowed. The only way to get to its nameless coves and deserted beaches and to explore its nooks and crannies is by hugging the coast in a kayak, camping on beaches where the only footprints you are likely to see will be yours and the seabirds’.

On the Channel Islands, restrictions apply, self-sufficiency is a must, but the rewards abound for a kayaker dodging rogue waves, paddling against powerful northwest winds and communing with curious pinnipeds peering above the canopy of a kelp forest.

Nose to Nose with Spilogale gracilis amphiala

I left my tent at home. I wanted to travel light, move quickly and break camp with minimal fuss. Sleeping under the stars was the way to go. Water Canyon campground is one place, though, where you don’t want to lay your sleeping bag out in the open. Endemic deer mice will use your downed mound as a potential playground, scurrying across your body, playing tag with their siblings and cousins.

I solved this conundrum by throwing my sleeping pad on top of a picnic table. The campground was deserted and I slept soundly until around 3 a.m. Then a steady thump on the bench of the table woke me up. Quietly I grabbed my headlamp, switched it to the on position and looked down. I was literally nose to nose with an inquisitive spotted skunk.

Skunks are native on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands. This one didn’t flinch and stood its ground, its snout twitching with each sniff to determine what I was. After deciding that I wasn’t a threat, it stomped its padded paws and continued foraging for food. It wasn’t alone. Two little ones waited nearby, creating quite a ruckus thrashing through the parched grass.

Elephants of Santa Rosa

When I rounded Sandy Point, the exposed northwest tip of the island, blubbery northern elephant seals swam and bobbed near my boat. The big bulls breached the cobalt blue ocean with bloodshot eyes, revealing their pink necks, raw from countless battles for females and territory.

Then, without warning, two young adult males rose up, breaking the surface of the water on either side of my kayak. Their girth caused huge waves, and their sudden appearance surprised me, nearly causing me to capsize. I steadied my boat, dug in and quickly paddled away from the craggy point fingering its way toward San Miguel Island three miles west.

Another elephant once roamed these parts. About 20,000 years ago, the archipelago was one immense island named Santarosae. Then, the channel crossing from the mainland was a mere five miles, and Columbian mammoths made the swim across to the island. Seven thousand years later, those wooly behemoths had evolved into a pygmy species only four feet tall at the shoulder. Eventually, the polar ice caps melted, sea levels rose and the archipelago formed. This left the mammoths stranded where they eventually became extinct. About 2,000 years ago the islands reached their present size. Today you can find fossilized remains of the woolies protruding from the walls of remote canyons.

Over fifty archaeological sites containing pygmy mammoths exist on Santa Rosa Island, and a complete pygmy mammoth skeleton, the only one of its kind, was discovered in 1994.

The Maritime Culture of Wima

Wima is what the Chumash Indians called Santa Rosa Island. After landing my kayak on another deserted beach, I explored a long, lonely stretch of sand dunes. Weathered bluffs hovered above crashing surf. California brown pelicans, double-crested cormorants and western gulls roosted on knobby pinnacles, enjoying the warm sun and the occasional light, soothing spray from the exploding waves. Some young California sea lions frolicked in the tubular conditions, the best bodysurfers on the windswept isle. Far beyond the cresting swells and the swaying kelp beds, a lone sea urchin boat lay anchored motionless on the horizon.

I scrambled up a short, steep bluff with my binoculars and scanned 360 degrees. The plume from a whale’s spout floated offshore, a pair of black oystercatchers pried at barnacle encrusted mussels, and a herd of Kaibab deer frozen by my presence stared back teary-eyed into my binoculars.

Then I came across a once popular but now ancient beach hangout on one of the many marine terraces on Santa Rosa—a dense pile of broken abalone shells, sun-bleached fish bones and spineless, gutted sea urchins. Known as a midden, or trash heap, it is evidence of ancient everyday living on the windswept island. Various sites similar to this one, numbering in the hundreds throughout the chain, are the remains of Chumash villages, burial grounds and tool making quarries.

The First Islander

As well as the bones of pygmy mammoth, Santa Rosa Island contains the oldest positively dated human remains in North America, at 13,200 years old. Known as “Arlington Springs Man,” his remains were discovered in 1959 by anthropologist Phil Orr at Arlington Canyon, where a freshwater spring gently flows to the beach on the west end of Santa Rosa Island. Two femurs were found protruding out of a crumbling canyon wall along with fossilized remains of pygmy mammoths and giant mice.

The canyon is generally difficult to approach in a kayak because it is exposed to swells pushed by strong northwesterly winds. Fortunately, when I arrived, conditions were placid. I glided in on a feathering wave at high tide. The cobbled beach was fortified by a flotsam of tangled bull kelp, shards of driftwood, tattered fishing lines and punctured buoys. I ran through a gauntlet of kelp flies, escaping into a freshwater estuary. The water was clear and sweet and soothing on my salt-encrusted skin.

Arlington Canyon is narrow and tranquil. Where the remains of Arlington Man were found, the first islanders had a terrific vantage point to watch the sea, retrieve fresh water, fish and hunt. What is amazing is that Arlington Man must have paddled some form of watercraft, migrating down the coast and out to the island.

Rounding Carrington

The front side of Santa Rosa along the wave-battered coast was awe-inspiring. For eighteen miles I dodged consistent surf as howling northwest winds aided my progress. When I needed a rest, I paddled into thick kelp beds that forced the waves to lie down. On a couple of occasions I ducked inside tiny, secluded coves with just enough beach to rest and hide from the weather.

As I was closing in on Carrington Point, a colossal wall of fog engulfed my point of reference, bearing down on me like a giant wave. When it swallowed me up I couldn’t see a quarter mile ahead, but the misty haze cooled my skin and offered respite from the glaring sun. As quickly as it arrived, the overcast skies opened up, and the sheer, broad cliff face of Carrington again dominated the horizon.

When I rounded its eroding mass, half moon Bechers Bay shimmered in the afternoon light. The end of my journey had arrived. I was thrilled to reach my final destination and grateful for my discoveries, but equally dispirited that my thirty-seven mile circumnavigation of Wima was finished.

Island Info

National Geographic Maps Trails Illustrated of the Channel Islands National Park shows permitted camping areas on Santa Rosa. The topographic map explains those restrictions. Call 800-365-CAMP for a beach camping permit.

For boat transportation, call Island Packers 805-642-1393.

For more information, contact the Channel Islands National Park 805-658-5730. http://www.nps.gov/chis/