and wondered why I'd ever come back.
Another sunny clear day. Hiked from Catalina airport to Avalon through the degraded and denuded landscape, and wondered why I'd ever come back.
Up early, we had paid $34 for a 10 mile ride from Avalon to the Airport In The Sky that left Avalon at 7:30am. Figured it was a good way to get out of the sheltered humorless town of Avalon and its belching go-karts, see some of the island interior. My semi-faux goal was to see some of the ironwood groves, marked on a map somewhere near Echo Lake, then walk the rest of the way to town along the Transcatalina Trail.
So we piled in a van (not the fancy shuttle thing on the website--apparently too difficult to deal with blown tires and mechanics) and set off with some other adventurers. Up out of Avalon along a parade of eucalypts, then cresting the top and whoa, there's a bison next to the road just past the completely empty and kinda new looking reservoir. We stopped and gawked at the beast, then kept on going. The landscape was generally drab and barren, without even an inch of dead grass, just pebbles and dust and cactus. There were clumps of brush here and there--the big island toyon shrub, a taco-leaf sumac, a lemonade berry bush, and a few treelike scrub oaks--especially on the slopes where the buffalo don't roam. But it was the patches of prickly pear everywhere that stood out.
We waited for the restaurant manager to drive out and unlock the entrance gate to the airport (who he's attempting to guard against, well, that's another story), and then he drove back because he had the wrong key and finally came back again to let us in. The airport was a quaint 1930s Spanish-style building, tile roof, hexagonal Saltillo tile floors, a restaurant and gift shop, on top of a mountain, surrounded by cactus scrub. It would've felt remote except for the two dozen container ships and skyscrapers far off in the distance against the mountains, maybe it's more isolated than remote. A quick squizz around the garden/nature center--better than the Wrigley Botanic Garden when it comes to island plants--then time to hike.
First stop was the soapstone quarry, which are all over the island. It was a rock outcropping the size of a washer/dryer combo with some bowls or something being carved, until the Christians came and kidnapped the locals, shipping them off to the San Gabriel Mission to slave away in the name of Jesus. Kinda meh, though there were two scraggly ironwood trees that someone planted near the outcrop.
Back up to the road to the turnoff to Echo Lake, down a hiking trail on the Conservancy map, and uh-oh a locked gate. Hm. Back to the main road, spotted a table with a shade structure, and maybe an ironwood tree? We checked out both 'groves', again listed on the conservancy map, going in the enclosure to keep the deer and the bison out. Stared at the Blair grove (maybe four to six trees, and a lot of dead wood), and the sadder Ackerman grove (two trees), though I enjoyed plant spotting all the other things inside where the big game can't get. Ceanothus arboreus, a manzanita with big berries, Lavetera assurgentifolia, a buckwheat that wasn't St Catherine's Lace but half that size. All in a space that's maybe 5 acres, probably a lot more in there and easier to identify in springtime.
Faux Goal accomplished, I wanted to go up Blackjack Mountain but it had a ring fence of towers on top, so nah. Past Blackjack campground (not bad, well equipped) then along a shady northern slope to... rolling hills with not much to recommend. Up and down, bison poop, a white feral cat, dust, cactus, overgrazed hillsides. A bison in a gully, we didn't get close.
I thought to myself: why would you come here? This is a degraded island that's far exceeded any carrying capacity for human habitation--a few years ago, washing dishes was banned so all the tourist places turned to disposable cutlery, no doubt ending up in some landfill in some corner of the island. What exactly is the Catalina Conservancy doing? Are they getting rid of the mule deer and corralling the bison so the island isn't turned into a poop and cactus wasteland? Or would that upset the bison plush-toy vendors in Avalon? And who is this island for? The mix of private ownership and Conservancy and other interests just seem like it's a place that muddles along.
Catalina is the faded toy project of a consumer product millionaire from a previous century, handed over after the family decided it wasn't worth keeping up the place. Avalon really isn't compelling as a beach town (the beach is 50 feet of sand leading down to the harbor, spotted with a light sheen of iridescent oil), the backcountry is beige, there's a lot of noisy smelly traffic, getting out of town is a long uphill walk.
We were happy to have sated our curiosity, but don't see any reason to come back.