Review of the Silver Canyon Connector Trail
18/10/2025
DO NOT TRUST THE OTHER REVIEWS OF THIS TRAIL.
I don't know if there is some kind of problem with the website and it has merged reviews from another trail, but most of the reviews ARE NOT FOR THIS TRAIL AND SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED.
There are reviews here saying they went on this hike with their children. THIS IS NOT A HIKE FOR CHILDREN.
There are reviews here saying they took their grandparents on this trail and had a nice little picnic on the summit. THIS IS NOT A TRAIL FOR GRANDMAS.
Is this even a trail? The fact that this has a pin on Google Maps like it's some kind of public foot-path is completely insane. This is my first time writing a review, so I hope it does not get deleted, but after what happened to me on this trail I just felt like I really had to.
And just to get ahead of what I know everyone is going to say in response to this review. Yes - I started hiking this trail in the evening - which I know is stupid - but this is not something I would have done if the reviews did not make it sound like a casual walk up the canyon for a pretty view of the pink sunset.
Also - I had a lot on my mind that evening - and I did not exactly have the luxury of deciding when in the day to process it. Perhaps it's too much information but I had just received a message from Iran - the news that my sister had given birth. When you have family in another country you do not get to decide at what time of the day you receive those kinds of messages.
Anyway, like I said, I started this trail in the evening. And at first everything was fine. I got an Uber up to where the trail starts, high above Santa Barbara, on the canyon roads, just as the big villas start to thin out. And I'll admit - the beginning is nice. Down in the canyon below I could see the botanic gardens - in that rich, humid peaceful state that settles on gardens before sunset. Beyond the gardens I could see the shopping streets of downtown Santa Barbara, and beyond that, the beach and the sea. I felt like I could hear the faint rumble of the churning Pacific reflecting against the sky.
The start of the path is basically a dirt service road - wide enough to drive a car down - that ascends slowly winding up the side of the valley. On the way up I passed a couple of runners heading down, their shoes clapping on the sandy path like a ticking clock. And as the trail wove deeper into the valley, slowly the view of the ocean disappeared behind the cliffs like a curtain being drawn.
Regarding the news from Iran - it had been a while since I'd heard anything from my family. The last time I'd heard anything I'd been sitting on the beach next to the University. I remember that over the mountains I could see the smoke from the Los Padres wildfires rising and twisting in the shape of cotton balls. It was a literal smoke signal - a sign that something bad was happening somewhere.
But if the smoke from the Los Padres fires represented some vague information from far away, then the messages from Tehran were unfathomably distant. Watching the smoke curl and filter into the atmosphere, it was hard to comprehend what was left of any message that travelled half the length of Asia plus the Pacific Ocean. Anything from that far away becomes morse-code, semaphores, fractal over-compressed JPEGs saved and re-saved dozens of times.
The next part of the trail is also nice. As I continued climbing out of the shadow of the valley, eventually Santa Barbara again became visible, lit like a model-village under the evening sun. Up there it feels very far away from everything.
In the furthest distance I could just about make out the University's Davidson Library. It was a place I was deeply familiar with right now. If I shut my eyes I could visualise the table in the corner of the North-East wing where I usually sat. On an evening like this the sun would be beaming through the large panelled windows, spreading out over the desk, giving the hazelnut laminate a slight golden yellow glow. The plaster walls would just be starting to radiate warmth, tranquil under the air conditioning's quiet, relentless rumble. I felt like I could see every seam of the desk's wood grain.
And as easily as I could envision the University's Davidson Library, Tehran was fading. There was my grandmother's apartment in Kohak. The small dark wooden coffee table with glass top. The dusty red armchairs with torn seams around the bottom where the wooden feet slotted in. That simultaneous feeling of the eternal and temporariness - whole rooms vanishing when you close the door on them - furniture fading in and out of reality passing via some kind of deep universal storage facility.
Eventually I reached the point at which the trail brakes off from the main dirt track. And I guess this is one of my final warnings: the turning is unmarked and easy to miss - it looks more like an animal trail than a turning. And ultimately, this is the point at which the trail breaks down. If I was thinking about what I was doing - looking down into that overgrown trail in the fading light - I would have turned back here.
But I guess I wasn't thinking about what I was doing that evening because I didn't hesitate and headed up the connector trail.
It is hard to describe the way in which the trail breaks down, because it isn't just one thing which makes the trail difficult and slow to follow from this point onward.
First, there is the overgrowth, which quickly closes in around from all sides like being crushed onto a metro train. I was crouching and crawling through small tunnels formed from the branches of the surrounding bushes - poked and scraped - bobbing up for air like a small mammal poking out of their burrow.
Then there is the task of actually knowing where the trail is. Dry crumbling roots - where the path would sink and soften into the gritty ground. Cutting across the wash that had flowed down from the canyon - fading into the texture of rubble and fist-sized rocks. Outcrops of pale yellow boulders - scrambling up and over, then down, threading myself through tiny gaps searching for person-sized spacings.
I was looking for patches of dry sand. In these you could often spot the faint traces of shoe-prints - evidence that other people had passed through the canyon along the same route - reassurance that I wasn't just setting out into the wilderness on an entirely original path.
Then, at some point I realised that although I'd managed to follow the path, I hadn't actually seen anyone else for a long time. The anxiety started to brew in my stomach.
Not seeing anyone else for a long time was not an unusual feeling for me by itself. I'd been spending days locked in my room in an attempt to finish my Master's thesis - an exhausting document on the influence of livestock in the development of the first cities in Mesopotamia.
I was reminded of the first time I'd told my father that I was going to study bronze-age history at Santa Barbara University.
"California?" He looked surprised - well - an American University - that is not nothing.
"But why not study Iranian history?"
"Lots of Bronze-age history is Iranian," I replied. Close enough.
"Oh!" He broke into a rare smile. That felt like ancient history.
If fact, checking my watch, I'd been walking for almost three hours now. I opened Google Maps, trying to roughly work out how much progress I'd made. In the last hour I'd only gone about 800 meters. That was insane, and it was getting dangerously close to sunset. There was no way I would make it to the summit before it got dark. And a more important realisation: even if I did, how would I get down?
Then I remembered something. On these very reviews for the trail I'd seen pictures of people splashing around in a waterfall pool. Looking at Google Maps I noticed a "Waterfall" pin that seemed like it was not that far from where I was now. Given the people in the pictures were in swimming gear with towels and stuff I wondered if perhaps there was some kind of alternative path leading up to the Waterfall - perhaps with car access I could use to get down off the mountain quickly.
With a renewed energy, I searched the trail for the branch that would lead me down to the waterfall, and descended quickly down it, shuffling and sliding down on the wash, holding onto roots and branches and stepping from rock to rock down into the valley. Soon I was in shadow, and the air became cold and a little damp. After about half an hour I finally arrived at the "Waterfall" pin.
There, in the grey degrading light, was a small muddy puddle - swarming with flies and mosquitoes.
In hindsight it should have been obvious - California is not known for its abundance of water. Still - let me put one more thing clearly for anyone who has made it this far into the review:
THE WATERFALL DRIES UP IN THE SUMMER.
I'll admit, I sat down next to the "waterfall" and cried. At that point I knew I was not making it down the mountain until the morning. Eventually I gathered myself together and worked my way back up the trail I had come down, looking for a spot with some kind of foliage that was not filthy with dust and which looked like it might be soft enough to sit or lie down on.
I found a rocky outcrop located above the waterfall with a flat sandy area sheltered by a large upright boulder - bushes either side. There was a kind of mossy looking bush with small leaves and stems that still had a hint of green to them. I bent it over and spread it out on the floor. There was just about enough space to lie down, if I rested my head on my backpack.
From down on the ground, the leaves of a small tree that branched over the outcrop spread out across the deep purple sky. They were shaking in the light breeze - like black cherry blossoms, or falling confetti. I was totally exhausted.
And then, seemingly before I realised, it was very dark. I was so hungry and my mouth was dry. At least the ground and surrounding rocks, which had been baking in the sun all day, were warm from the heat. If I could even sleep for one or two hours it would make the dawn come a lot quicker.
Suddenly my phone buzzed. I opened it and on the screen was a blurry, pixelated grid of photos from my sister and her husband. It looked like they were out of the hospital. I didn't have enough signal to download the photos. I quickly turned my phone off. I would need battery for the morning.
I closed my eyes and my mind drifted towards everything I had left to finish for my Master's thesis. I'd been studying the Mesopotamian god Sumugan, the god of shepherds and livestock. I'd been focusing on the question as to if his origins had any link to the domestication of donkeys. In my mind's eye I could see the carvings of Sumugan, in his fleece, with his long beard and tall golden hat - carved by an unknown artist, at an unknown time - known to be Sumugan only by the lamb that appeared to nestle at his feet.
Donkeys rarely appeared in any of the carvings. What was that evidence of?
The past sends us messages, but they're all so muddled - so purposeless and out of context - so polluted by our own prejudices, projections, and interpretations.
I turned onto my side. Along the sandy floor were small chips of rock, like flattened clam shells, smoothed and rounded by the dust, wind and infrequent rain.
They reminded me of the shards of mussel shells which must have covered the ground in the first ancient Mesopotamian gathering places. Men in simple woollen clothing, talking in soft sounds around a campfire, eating foraged mussels, and talking about family, gods, hunting - the same topics again and again for hundreds of thousands of years.
Next to the tree above me, towering over the sand and rock, was another large pale boulder - the kind I'd been clambering over in the day.
The difference in Mesopotamian was that the abundance allowed the men to return again and again to the same spot each night. Such places would eventually become familiar. There would be memories, stories told about it - and suddenly the feeling of returning would be different, special. The place itself would have gained some kind of quality. And to commemorate that, perhaps one of the men would erect a crude totem or figurine - it would become a shrine - to that feeling - to the god of that place.
In my half-sleep, at what seemed like a great distance, I felt like I heard some kind of sharp animal call. Not a donkey, nor a sheep.
Animals, too, like the habitual - the familiar - the spiritual - the feeling of safety and routine and what is known. They pray to the same gods.
As more people come to the place, the shrine becomes a trading pose, a small permanent encampment. If the abundance can sustain it, a village, a town - eventually a city. The first city. Now the floor is so littered with shells that it forms roads - thousands of voices talking quietly in the night - and the smoke of thousands of fires rises into the night's sky to the sound of voices talking about family, gods, farming, trade - for another thousand years.
I do not remember the night well, but I remember the first signs of dawn, and the intense feeling of cracking thirst in my throat as the pitch blackness finally broke and the sky began to turn the colour of the deep sea.
I slowly made my way back down the trail, occasionally using my phone torch in the parts of the valley still under shadow. By the time I had reached the larger track where the path widens it was considerably brighter, but I was still so thirsty and covered in dirt from my night on the ground.
A woman was walking her dog down the trail in the opposite direction. I asked her for some water and - as if we both spoke foreign languages - she wordlessly decanted around an inch of her water bottle into mine - peering down at my filthy t-shirt.
And then I was back out at the road. I called an Uber to take me back to my apartment. Thankfully my Uber rating was unaffected by my terrible condition.
In my room I drank a huge amount of water, ate some instant noodles, took a shower and collapsed on my bed.
I finally opened the photos from my sister. In bright, crisp pixels was the image my sister's new son, still red and tender, wrapped in a pale blue blanket. They must have been back from the hospital. Zooming in, I could see each wrinkle on his skin, and each fibre of the fabric he was wrapped in under the soft lighting of their living room. Within a few months, to that baby, that lounge would be his village, and that house his city - and he would be surrounded by totems and gods.
Maybe once he is old enough I can take him up the connector trail to see Santa Barbara from above. This time in the day, with plenty of food and water.