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The Yeager Mesa is one of the most difficult to reach places
in the Santa Ana Mountains. |
The Yeager Mesa are two meadows high up the walls of Trabuco Canyon, in the heart of the Santa Ana Mountains. These twin meadows are nestled below a dense forest of Bigcone Spruce and oak woodland. The canyon below is chocked with alder, sycamore, maple, and scraggly oaks. The trail to this high oasis begins at the end of the Trabuco Canyon Road, starting east on West Horsethief Trail, ascending the floor of this incredible canyon. From time to time a trickle of water surfaces to form the segmented Trabuco Creek, babbling through the trees. After some time of easy hiking the bottom of a steep slope appears, with obvious signs of use ascending its face. The path up the front face of Yeager Mesa is only a quarter mile in distance, but over 400 feet in elevation gain. It's slippery, steep, and often muddy. It is very treacherous. The reward at the end, however, has surpassed almost everything I've seen before. The meadow plastered with small Bracken ferns, and the spruce forest behind towering above. The area burned in the 70s, but the larger, old growth trees are charred but still grow. The pictures you're about to see were taken on two trips, the first was in October, the second on the shortest day of the year after a week of drizzle. The conditions on both trips were some of the finest hiking conditions I've witnessed.
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| Old car right off the trail |
Up until 2009, the mesa was off limits to visitation as it was a private mining claim, with a 200 foot tunnel driven directly under the mesa, although it is flooded today. The Yeager Mesa was a mining claim since the early 1900s, the same time when the last bear was shot in the near vicinity of the mesa in 1908. Jack Yeager, the namesake, built a cabin somewhere in the woods near the meadow but no remains are locatable today. Also, in 1949, an old trainer plane, a PT-19 surplus WWII aircraft crashed on the mesa leaving some interesting remains by the trail.
The following pictures do little justice to the incredible beauty and serenity of this location. Thanks to Ron Vanderhoff for helping me out with plant identities.
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| First stand of evergreens appears |
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| More evergreens amongst the chaparral |
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| Looking up canyon |
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| Tree tunnel |
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| Sunlight streaming through the alders |
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| Mossy wall with ferns |
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Milkmaid blossom
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| This nice swimming hole was probably 3 1/2 feet deep. |
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| Another alder grove |
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| Looking up the lower section of the Yeager trail. |
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| Elevation gaining rapidly |
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| Pano from about 1/3 of the way up |
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| "Live Forever" on the ridge |
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| Up the headwater fork of Trabuco Creek |
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Northwest toward Santiago Peak, or the higher peak of Saddleback,
at 5689 feet. |
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| Reached the lower meadow of the mesa. |
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| Looking back down from the top |
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| Santiago on a clear day |
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| Mesa in different light |
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| Moving across the meadow |
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| Upper meadow |
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| Moving into the Bigcone Spruce forest, one of the furthest south such groves. |
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| Canopy |
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| Polypody Fern |
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| Through the trees |
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| Mossy trunk |
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| Baby polypody ferns |
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| More moss |
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| Canopy and ferns |
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| Silhouette of fern |
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| This forked trunk fell onto the living tree |
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| Upper meadow in fading light |
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| Colorful Turkeytail Fungus on the way down |
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| Closer |
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| More fungus |
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| Remains of the PT-19 |
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| Rear elevator flap |
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| Twisted scrap |
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| Forest |
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| Los Pinos Peak is up there somewhere |
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| Up Trabuco Canyon |
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| Back to the water |
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| Reflection |
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| Plenty of water |
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| Alder grove in the fading light |
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| Different exposure |
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| Pano of the canyon bottom |
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| Sycamore |
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| Bell Ridge towering above the canyon |
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| Truly a special place |
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| Hazy sunset |
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| Final sycamore grove before reaching the car |
4 comments:
Andrew- thank you for the virtual visit to Yeager's Mesa. I visited that lovely site many times in the early 1970s through the 1990s, but have not been there recently. I see that the Pseudotsuga forest has grown much taller than it was at my last visit. Did you see the madrone grove? The biggest ones were lost in the 1977 fire that took out most of the Pseudotsuga, but a patch of smaller ones remained in the creek bed below the mesa.
I am a bit puzzled about your report of the trail. I have always accessed the mesa from above: I hike down the from the main divide truck trail then scrambled up the side of the mesa. I have never seen the trail, and would not have considered the hike particularly challenging.
Another question about the plant life on the open part of the mesa. At one time the top was largely covered with bracken, but there were some substantial patches of native bunchgrasses. Are you able to report on the current composition of that area?
Thanks again for your report.
Hi Andrew,
Love your post and photos.
I am a botanist and have visited most of the canyons, peaks, mesas and other areas of The Santa Ana Mountains and other natural areas of OC and surrounding spots. I've been to Yeager Mesa a couple of times and agree with you that it is a beautiful spot. Be sure to go sometime in spring too, when it is very green and lush.
A couple of notes on the plants:
The conifers here are Bigcone Spruce (Pseudostuga macrocarpa). Douglas Fir, which is closely related, don't quite get this far south.
The ferns in the meadow are Bracken Ferns (Pteridium aquilinum). You also have a photo of an emerging California Polypody Fern (Polypodium californicum), which doesn't grow in the meadow, but is on shady rocks and slopes in the area.
The tall trees in the canyon bottoms are Alders (Alnus rhombifolia)' not Aspens. Aspens also don't make it this far south. They need a cooler environment and a hight elevation.
The "lily" is actually a Milkmaids (Cardamine californica), one of the first flowers to bloom each winter. It is a native member of the mustard family.
The colorful fan-shaped fungus is Turkeytail Fungus (Tramites versicolor).
The grey succulent is a species of Live Forever (Dudleya pulverulenta).
Love the photos, keep 'em coming. Btw, a couple of good resources for local plant I'd and photos is "The Natural History of Orange County" and CalFlora.org.
You might also be interested in visiting one of our native plant society meetings here in OC. Their free and always fun and informative. Check out OCCNPS.org. I am the OC field trip leader as well and we would love to have you join us sometime.
Ron Vanderhoff
CA Native Plant Society, Orange County
Hello Ted and Anon.
I haven't tried from above, but I have climbed up from the mesa as far as is reasonable. There is a large washout and a good chunk of the trail slid away and now requires rock climbing at the spot I stopped. I haven't located the madrone grove yet and I'd love it if you sent me an email and helped me locate it. The hike up the face of the mesa is not challenging, but very very steep and slippery.
Thanks for the better IDs on some of these plants, and the post was edited to reflect that.
Andrew- I sent you a KMZ for the madrones, although it is hard to be sure from the aerial photo exactly where my reference point is. The trail I use is not marked on Google Earth, but you can get a glimpse of it here and there. To use that trail you park at the Los Pinos Pk parking lot on Main Divide Road. Instead of heading out the ridge toward Los Pinos Peak, take the road that heads downhill into some oaks and bigcones. It comes out by the creekbed very close to Yeager's Mesa and just above the surviving madrones. Those are shrub size and right in the creek bed.
Your "anonymous" commenter is Ron Vanderhoff, one of the best botanists in Orange County, so you are in good hands with the plant IDs.
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