Behind this wealthy SoCal neighborhood, you can soak in a rustic hot spring oasis

The h2o bubbles up blistery from the world and sunlight filters down done the branches of mighty oaks.

But earlier you tin soak successful Santa Barbara County’s highly fashionable Montecito Hot Springs, you’ll request to hike a small implicit a mile uphill, threading your mode among boulders, oaks and a meandering creek. And earlier the hike, determination are 2 different important steps: getting to the trailhead and knowing what to expect.

The way to Montecito Hot Springs.

These rustic outpouring pools are astir 95 miles northwest of L.A. City Hall, conscionable upslope from well-to-do Montecito, whose residents see Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Though the way and blistery springs are portion of Los Padres National Forest, the trailhead is successful a residential vicinity of gated mansions. Beyond the trailhead parking country (which has country for 8 oregon 9 cars), the vicinity includes precise small curbside parking. After visitation surged during the pandemic, immoderate neighbors were accused by region officials of placing boulders to obstruct nationalist parking. Parking options were reduced further erstwhile region officials added parking restrictions earlier this year.

Bottom line: Unless you tin get connected a weekday betwixt 8 and 10 a.m., you’re astir apt amended disconnected taking a rideshare work to get there. Whenever you arrive, you’re apt to person company. And you mightiness privation to hold until the scenery dries retired a spot from the rains of caller weeks.

As Los Padres National Forest spokesperson Andrew Madsen warned, “the foothills of Santa Barbara are particularly fragile and hiking is particularly precarious successful the aftermath of dense rains.”

All that said, the hike is rewarding and free. From the Hot Springs Canyon trailhead astatine East Mountain Drive and Riven Rock Road, it’s a 2.5-mile out-and-back way to the blistery springs, with astir 800 feet of altitude summation connected the way.

Arriving astatine 10 a.m. connected a Tuesday, I got the past parking spot astatine the trailhead, stepped past the signs forbidding parking earlier 8 a.m. oregon aft sunset, past stepped past different motion informing that “this is simply a challenging and rugged hike.” Also, determination are nary bathrooms oregon trash cans connected the way oregon astatine the springs.

“It’s important that radical cognize what’s going connected up determination earlier they amusement up,” said Madsen. “It’s not each that glamorous.”

Even though it’s lone 1.2 oregon 1.3 miles to the blistery springs, program connected astir an hr of uphill hiking. Once you’re supra the residential lots, you’ll spot pipes on the way, carrying h2o down the hill, on with occasional trailside poison oak. As you adjacent the pools, you’ll prime up the scent of sulfur and announcement the h2o turning a unusual bluish hue. Then the way jumps crossed the creek — which I initially missed.

But determination was a metallic lining. That detour gave maine a accidental to respect the chromatic ruins of a edifice that was built adjacent to the springs successful 1870s. After a fire, it became a backstage club. Then it burned successful the Coyote occurrence of 1964, which blackened much than 65,000 acres, destroyed much than 90 homes and killed a firefighter. The blistery springs and surrounding onshore person been portion of Los Padres National Forest since 2013.

Hikers look westbound from the ruins adjacent Montecito Hot Springs.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

On a wide time with the prima successful the close place, you tin basal among the overgrown ruins, look westbound and spot the ocean, a fewer aged lipid platforms and the long, debased silhouette of Santa Cruz Island. This is what the autochthonal Chumash would person seen (minus the lipid platforms) done the galore years they utilized the springs earlier European immigrants arrived.

Pleasant arsenic that presumption was, I was acceptable to soak, arsenic were the 2 couples who got momentarily mislaid with me. (We were each Montecito Hot Springs rookies.) Once we’d retraced our steps to the creek and crossed it, the way took america rapidly past a hand-lettered CLOTHING OPTIONAL motion to a bid of spring-fed pools of varying temperatures.

A twelve radical were already lazing successful and astir the uppermost pools (one pistillate topless, 1 antheral bottomless), but respective pools remained empty. I took 1 that was astir 2 feet heavy and possibly 90 degrees. In 1 excavation adjacent maine sat Ryan Binter, 30, and Kyra Rubinstein, 26, some from Wichita, Kan.

Hikers Ryan Binter and Kyra Rubinstein, visiting from Wichita, Kan., soak astatine Montecito Hot Springs.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

“She recovered this,” said Binter, praising Rubinstein’s net hunt savvy.

At the adjacent excavation were Emanuel Leon, 20, of Carpinteria, Calif., and Evelyn Torres, 19, of Santa Barbara. The past clip they’d tried this hike, they’d strayed off-track and missed the blistery springs, truthful this time, they were savoring the scene.

“Revenge!” said Leon, settling in.

The soaking was truthful mellow, quiescent and unhurried that I was amazed to larn that the pools were not erected legally. As Madsen of the Los Padres National Forest explained aboriginal by phone, they were “created by the way gnomes” — hikers arranging rocks themselves to set h2o travel and temperature, with nary authorities entities involved.

Legal oregon not, they made a bully reward aft the hike uphill. The downhill hike retired was easier and quicker, of course, but inactive tricky due to the fact that of the rocks and twisting trail.

On your mode retired of Montecito, particularly if it’s your archetypal time, instrumentality a bully look astatine the adobe-style grandeur of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church building, which looks similar it was smuggled into California from Santa Fe. For nutrient and drink, caput to Coast Village Road (the community’s main drag) oregon the Montecito Village Shopping Center connected East Valley Road. Those shops and restaurants whitethorn not lucifer the wonderment and comfortableness of a earthy bath successful the woods, but for civilization, they’re not bad.