Ventana Wilderness

On Sunday, our little Ventana Wilderness Ranger outfit is having a summit—a refresher of sorts, on radios, on forms that need to be filled out, on Leave No Trace principles. Et cetera. I was asked to create a Trivia Contest, which as it turns out is becoming more of an Info Fest. Here's some of what I've got (not in question form):

What we today call Junipero Serra Peak (5,856 feet), the highest point in the Ventana Wilderness, was called Pimkolam by the Salinan Indians. And before it was Junipero Serra, it was Santa Lucia Peak. Its name was formally changed in 1906 after the Native Daughters of the Golden West sought to assign the name Junipero Serra to a Sierra Nevada Peak—only to have that shot down by the Sierra Club, who pointed out (quite rightly) that Serra, the Franciscan who established the Californian missions, never set foot in the Sierra. Serra probably also never set foot on Pimkolam either, but he did establish three missions in shouting distance of the Esselen Indians, who lived in the Santa Lucia Range—and whose lives were forever changed as a result. So okay: Junipero Serra a.k.a. Santa Lucia a.k.a. Pimkolam. It's a grand view from the top, no matter what the peak is called.

The Ventana and Silver Peak Wildernesses are in the Los Padres National Forest, which has a north and south region. The southern region includes eight more wildernesses: the Sespe, San Rafael, Dick Smith, Chumash, Mitilija, Santa Lucia, Machesna Mountain, and Garcia. The first California condor reintroduction program was launched in the Sespe Wilderness.

The southernmost natural stand of California redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) is in our Silver Peak Wilderness, just north and east of the Salmon Creek ranger station in the far south of Monterey County. Seventeen acres. In 2005 it was designated the Southern Redwoods Botanical Area.

There are some 300 miles of trails in the Ventana–Silver Peak wilderness areas, with nine major trailheads. The Ventana Wilderness Alliance forum covers sixty-two trails, with up-to-date reports of trail conditions.

The Ventana trails were mostly built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The core area of the Ventana Wilderness was set aside in 1931 as the 45,520-acre Ventana Primitive Area. Since then, the protected lands have been added to incrementally, and today the Ventana Wilderness (formally established in 1969) stands at 240,026 acres, while the Silver Peak Wilderness (designated in 1992) adds an additional 31,555 acres of public lands: a big, rugged playground for backpackers, hikers, and equestrians.