2023-06 Channel Island National Park - Santa Cruz Island Camping Trip
About Channel Islands NP and Santa Cruz Island
In my opinion, Channel Islands NP is definitely a hidden gem behind all the big name national parks in California. If you happen to visit the Los Angeles area with a day or two to spare, I will highly recommend checking it out (but definitely plan ahead for ferry availability).
Unlike most of the US national parks, Channel Islands National Park is located offshore, about 29 miles away from the US mainland. It’s only accessible by water (1~3hr ferry), offering a perfect combination of easy hikes, picture-perfect coastal view, unique wildlives, and a variety of water activities (snorkeling, sea cave kayaking, and bioluminescent waves if you are lucky!).
Currently there are 5 islands, each of which is worthy of its own trip. However, historically, about 20,000 years ago, when sea level was much lower, they were all connected as one single Island (Santarosae) above sea level, and much more accessible from the mainland for land animals. Large prehistoric animals like pygmy mammoth, as well as various birds crossed the ocean to seek home on this island. As sea level rose over thousands of years, the island’s ecosystem started to be cut off from the mainland. A number of species evolved relatively independently and remained distinctively different from their relatives on the mainland, earning Channel Islands the (slightly exaggerated imo..) nickname: “North America’s Galapagos”. There are in total 145 species that can only be found on Channel Islands of the entire planet, including Island Foxes which you will see A LOT…
Island fox that checking out us, and our food :)
Humans (native north americans) also arrived and occupied the Channel Islands from 10,000~12,000 years ago. In the 19th century, Europeans arrived, building ranches, monasteries, and small modern day villages. Channel Islands are a particularly attractive site for ranchers, because there were no natural predators for cattles and sheep, saving the ranchers a lot of headache I guess… Scorpion ranch was one of the largest at that time on Santa Cruz Island, until the National Park Service acquired the last bit of it in 1997 from the owner family. The valley at Santa Cruz Island was flooded severely in the 1997 winter, wiping out almost everything of Scorpion Ranch. However, some ranching machinery and equipment remained on the island, outside the visitor center, for visitors to learn about its ranching history.
Scorpion ranch in the old days!
Ranch equipment from the 19th and 20th century
Step-by-step Planning (for overnight camping)
Resources
NPS site for Channel Islands.
Ferry via Island Packers Cruise.
Sea Cove Kayaking at Santa Cruz Island via Santa Barbara Adventure Company.
Deciding which island to visit
There are five islands to choose from: Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara. Each of them is fairly unique in its own way according to my research, and worth a trip individually. Technically some islands are reachable by airplanes too, but super expensive… so I didn’t bother looking it up... For this trip, I went with the obvious choice for a first-timer: Santa Cruz.
A brief comparison:Santa Cruz: Slightly over 1 hour ferry ride. largest island, most visited, most developed trails, with guided tours for water activities like snorkeling and sea cove kayaking.
Anacapa: Closest (1hr ferry ride). Very small island. Mostly known for being a popular nesting place for seabirds. Most ppl do day trips, but limited campsites are available.
Santa Rosa: 3hr ferry ride. Known for its abundance of beautiful beaches, sand dunes and Chumash people historical heritage sites.
San Miguel: Furthest of all, 3hrs of ferry. Known for sea lions and elephant seals watching, and other sea lives.
Santa Barbara: Very small. currently closed for ferry. You can private boat in but I didn’t research much of it.
Deciding between a day-trip v.s overnight camping
For Santa Cruz, a day trip itinerary looks like this:
8AM: Start early in the day with the first 8AM ferry, arriving at Scorpion Cove around 9am.
9:30am: Join the sea cove kayaking tour right after arrival.
Around noon: Return to shore, a few quick hikes afterwards
4pm or 4:30pm: catch the return ferry back.
From my observation of our fellow passengers, most people chose a day trip for its simplicity. The obvious limitation of a day trip is you have limited time to explore the island.
For overnight camping at Santa Cruz, the obvious benefit is that you can easily spread hikes and sea cove kayaking in two days. An additional benefit is you can start off your water activities early before the first ferry of that day arrives. Plus, some of the campsites have stunning valley views.
The downside of adding camping to your trip, is it complicates your planning, because you need to ensure a campsite is available on the same day you can find a ferry ticket for. See next section for more details.
Reserving ferry tickets, campsite, and sea cave kayak tour.
OK, here comes the hardest part, aligning all the stars on the same day…
Direct links for all the reservations you need.
Ferry via Island Packers Cruise.
Camping at Santa Cruz Island, via reservation.gov.
Sea Cove Kayaking tour at Santa Cruz Island via Santa Barbara Adventure
Pro-tips, from a non pro
If you plan to camp there, plan ahead, MONTHs ahead! It’s not obvious to first time visitors, but on weekends in summer peak season, it is almost impossible to find availability for all 3 reservations on the same day, especially ferry tickets and camp sites without booking 3 months ahead. Make sure you open 3 websites side by side and search for the same date on all 3 sites at the same time.
For ferry reservation: make sure the RETURN trip for your desired date/time is available as well. Like the screenshot below makes it impossible to return the same day. I found this a very common situation for weekends.
For campsite: Upper campground (individual #23-25, and group sites) has a much better view, with just slightly longer walk (a few hundred meters) from the pier. Site #24 has absolutely the best view, dead-centered facing the valley. #23 and 25 next to it is also great but it is slightly on the side.
For kayak tours, we found the Discovery package interesting enough and didn’t upgrade to Adventure. YMMV
There is no return trip for the same day. Check before you book!
Upper campground map. #24 is the best site.
Preparation before the trip
Pets are not allowed.
For camping:
There is no running water on the island. You will need to bring sufficient drinking water with you. Generally recommend 1 gallon per person per day, plus additional for cooking / washing. There is no shower either, obviously.
The campground is about 0.5-1 mile easy walk from the pier. You need to haul your camp equipment up to the campsite, so bring trolleys if you have a lot of camping gears.
For kayaking:
Santa Barbara Adventure provided all necessary kayak gears, but bring water, sunglasses and apply sunscreen yourself.
It’s a sit-on kayak, so no need to learn how to eskimo-roll back into your kayak.
For ferry:
Take sea sick meds 1 hour before your ferry ride if you are prone to motion sickness.
Now, a twist of my trip, and my foot…
So, I broke a bone in my left foot a few days before this trip… I was in boot and on crutches. It was too late to cancel everything, so I decided to take the chances. In the worst case, staying at the campground for the whole trip doesn’t sound too bad:). However, I had to start additional preparation to make sure the injury doesn’t get worse.
The first pleasant surprise was that Santa Cruz Island provides a beach wheelchair upon request! Here, a huge shout out to the NPS team in Santa Cruz Island, especially a staff named Karen. She welcomed us with the beach wheelchair, and also rescued us by shuttling our camping gears to our campsite, which was a huge relief. Throughout our trip, we ran into her many times and she offered help every time she saw us, with lots of jokes to lighten up the day.
Karen welcomes us with many jokes, and a beach wheelchair…
Us, gears, crutches, and wheelchair…
Hiking with crutches was definitely a challenge. Thankfully trails at Santa Cruz Island are relatively easy. I was very skeptical that I could make the kayak tour initially. However the staff were very accommodating and helpful by providing transportation and helping me get into and out of the kayak safely.
Overall, even with severely limited mobility, I still managed to get the most out of this trip and enjoyed it thoroughly, thanks to all the help from the NPS staff, kayaking tour company staff, and of course my partner who wheelchaired me to the campsite! You da the real MVP…
Getting There
The ferry (by Island Packers) departs at this pier in Ventura. We arrived an hour beforehand as instructed, to load our gears to the boat. I snapped a few pictures of the quiet and peaceful pier.
The ride was an hour-ish long. The absolute highlight of the ferry ride was the dolphins that joined us for a ride!
Camping
After arrival, we offloaded our gears, and Karen had the beach wheelchair waiting for us! First time being in a wheelchair, I definitely was excited… In practice this was quite difficult to maneuver because of the gravels on the trail, and all the gears’ additional weights. However it was a super unique experience to say the least…
Out of sheer luck, when I made the reservation, I accidentally took #24, which turned out to be the best view in the entire campsite. The valley view was amazing. We briefly took some break from the wheelchair trip, and started setting up our camp.
View from campsite #24
One crucial tip to note, while island foxes are super adorable upon first sight, they are notorious for being aggressive towards food! However, the island foxes we encountered took it to another level… After we repeatedly denied it from stealing our food, they decided to pee on our bag… So definitely seal your tent and lock up your bags if you don’t want them to pee on them!
Hiking
Given my foot situation, we chose a relatively easy trail (Cavern Point Loop Hike) for its short distance (2-mile) but stunning ocean view at the top, especially during sunset time. I was initially slightly worried about the uphill and downhill climb, but turned out to be fine.
One thing to note is this trail has a stretch of staircases, we ran into a family with strollers and had to turn them around so the stroller could get down.
Sea Cave Kayak Tour
After a night of peaceful sleep, breakfast and coffee from my old faithful jetboil, we are ready to head over to our Sea Cave Kayak tour! Since the tour will run till 12:00am, we will have to pack everything and checkout from the campsite first. The tour office has rain-proof storage for stowing away these luggages.
I was quite worried about getting into and out of kayak with a broken foot, but the staff there were super friendly. The whole experience was super smooth and completely worry free. Off we went into the ocean!
Apparently we were lucky enough to come on a once-in-a-year kind of peaceful day with almost zero waves, so we managed to kayak much further than most of the tours normally reach. Throughout the whole tour, our guide took us to various sea caves, guided us patiently to maneuver through narrow pathways and low-height caves, and pointed out sea lives and various sea birds’ nests along the way. Experiencing sea caves the first time from a kayak, we were definitely extremely super excited.
Return!
Nothing particularly worth noting here, other than we saw even more dolphins! Overall Channel Islands and Santa Cruz Island didn’t disappoint. I definitely plan to return either to Santa Cruz island again to checkout the other half (prisoner harbor), or the other islands in the park.
Appendix: reviews
NPS rangers on Santa Cruz Island
You can clearly tell how much they love their job, and how much pride they took with their job. This is extremely inspiring to see.
Ferry via Island Packers Cruise.
Service was great, food onboard for purchase. The captain stops from time to time for dolphin and sea life watching.
Well organized, detailed instructions.
Honestly you also really have no other choice other than kayaking to the island yourself…
Sea Cove Kayaking tour at Santa Cruz Island via Santa Barbara Adventure
It’s not cheap, but I was really happy about their service and highly recommend their tour (more details in later section).
The guides were very knowledgeable and knew the areas well. The tour was both informational, entertaining, and challengingly interesting.
Super friendly staff helping me with my broken foot.
