This must be how a beginning skier feels when he makes a wrong turn on the bunny slopes and ends up at the top of a black diamond run. Looking down from the top of the sandstone outcropping called Lizard’s Mouth, I couldn’t see much of my intended route, as the land dropped away too steeply towards the city of Goleta and the Pacific Ocean. Still, I knew that between civilization and I stretched many miles of the thickest chaparral that Southern California had to offer. Every year, one group of idiots makes the mistake of attempting this off-trail descent, according to my online research. This summer, it was my turn to be the idiot.

Unlike last week’s bit of misfortune with the disappearing moonlight, I had no excuses for my present folly. A few months ago, I’d heard first-hand reports from the foolhardy trio who tried bushwhacking down the mountain last year and vowed never to do it again. They’d been forced to spend a cold, chilly night sleeping on rocks in a ravine, surrounded by poison oak. I hoped to fare better on my adventure, but I had read and heard enough to know that most of it was not going to be pleasant.

At least the trailhead was scenic. Lizard’s Mouth encompassed a colorful region of sandstone outcroppings along the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Five million years ago, titanic forces pushed the tectonic plate of the Pacific up against the North American Plate, thrusting layers of ocean sediment thousands of feet above sea level to create the mountain range. This segment’s high point – a feature shaped like a yawning lizard head – was a popular site for sunset picnics, and the remaining boulders attracted rock climbers, photographers and sadly, the worst kind of visitor: graffiti artists. Easy access by road had turned the boulder field into a battleground between taggers and preservationists. The latter group fought back by scouring, pressure-washing or spray-painting over the tags in natural colors.

This morning, I had the mountaintop scene to myself. I began the epic scramble by hiking down towards a lower boulder field. The sandstone surfaces there were still rough and crumbly, as there had not been enough human traffic to kick away the looser grains. I took my first tumble of the day, sliding on a sandy rock and landing hard on my posterior with my legs outstretched, straddling the boulder. At least the rock was conveniently saddle-shaped and not pointy, so my weight was evenly distributed. I only scraped my arm and left a little blood on the way down to the next ravine.

Now the shrubs thickened, and hopping from boulder to boulder was no longer an option. Unyielding manzanita bushes ruled the hillsides, forcing me to duck into a dry gully where I had to crawl beneath a canopy of vegetation to make any progress. Were I half my size, this would have been easy. As it was, the passage felt more like a Tunnel of Torments, the ceiling festooned with dangling implements of mutilation. All right, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but I was constantly spitting out spiderwebs while sharp branches raked my shoulders and dropped twigs down my collar. Overhanging limbs snagged the webbing of my backpack at every opportunity; the tunnel did not wish to let me go.

Eventually, the ravine dumped me out into the first of several safe zones, where the oak and California bay trees held the manzanita back and I could stand upright again. It was peaceful here, although juvenile turkey vultures hissed at me for disturbing their morning rest. The watercourse itself became more civilized; in wetter times, a stream would have poured across terraces of gracefully-contoured sandstone, spilling from pool to pool in spontaneous elegance.

Through the trees, I spotted more boulder fields on the adjacent hillsides, with crags and spires that raised their heads above the level of the brush. I wanted to explore these new regions, but reaching them would be a lengthy ordeal due to all the manzanita and poison oak. It suddenly occurred to me that boulder fields like Lizard’s Mouth were only appealing because they had seen decades of overuse, not because they were pristine. Human feet had broken and crushed all the shrubs between the rocks, allowing the underlying soil to wash away and creating pathways from boulder to boulder where brush had previously blocked access. I never considered the benefits of human impact before. If only those visitors would leave their cans of spray paint at home…

In time, I came to the midpoint of the three-thousand-foot slope – a seasonal waterfall known as the Widow’s Tear. When storms struck the Lizard’s Mouth region, the rainwater would funnel through the gully I’d just explored and spill out onto a broad, two-hundred-foot slab of sandstone, frothing and spreading across its surface in a vibrant display that could be seen from the city of Goleta. Though infrequent, the torrents had been enough to smooth down the giant slab, which was tilted at just above a 45° angle.

Peering over the edge of the falls, I could see no straightforward route down the slippery slope, and chaparral thickets impeded passage through the surrounding hills. I felt I had no choice but to consider a third option – clinging to the branches along the chaparral-sandstone boundary and trying not to fall down the face of the Widow’s Tear as I inched my way across the top and down the right side of the slab. Buzzards circled ominously overhead as I began the traverse. This seems doable, I thought to myself. And then the one-inch-thick, healthy-looking coffeeberry branch supporting my weight snapped off in my hand.

Immediately, I began sliding. I put my hands back to catch myself, but there was nothing to grab onto. My body shot down the slope feet-first, like a torpedo, and I feared my heels would soon catch on an uneven edge and cause me to cartwheel the remaining distance to the rocks at the bottom.

Then my eyes fixated upon a tuft of scraggly twigs sprouting from a divot in the sandstone below me. That would have to do. I aimed my feet towards the plant, used my hands to nudge my body a few inches to the right as I slid - losing skin in the process - and then leaned back against the wall so I wouldn’t flip when I made impact. My heels connected. The plant remained rooted to the wall, and I came to a jarring stop. Whew! It all happened so fast… and it could have been over… so fast.