Only Adults Allowed to Trek Through Caspers Wilderness

This hike is for adults only.

Caspers Wilderness Park regulations restrict minors to picnic areas and the park visitor center, and allow only adults (18 and over) in groups of two or more to hike park trails. Visitors must also obtain a wilderness permit, which states that the park is “characterized by certain inherent dangers” and that “your safety cannot be guaranteed.”

Both the unusual rules and the permit system are a response to a 1986 mountain lion attack on a 6-year-old boy. The incident also resulted in an outpouring of support for the beleaguered mountain lion population and a questioning of the meaning of the term wilderness.

It’s highly unlikely you will glimpse a mountain lion in Caspers Wilderness Park. The big cats are scarce and elusive. Suburban sprawl and human intrusion have reduced the number of mountain lions in Orange County and in every other place in the Southern California backcountry. The animal’s small numbers will likely be a comfort to some nervous individuals and a disappointment to those hikers who would welcome the opportunity to observe one of the graceful creatures.

Visitors to the 7,600-acre park in the Santa Ana Mountains near San Juan Capistrano will have a good chance of sighting other wildlife: deer, rabbits, coyotes, as well as more furtive animals such as foxes and bobcats. Bird watchers will want to consult the park’s bird list and test their skill by identifying the many species found in the hills and canyons.

Crisscrossing Caspers Wilderness Park are 30 miles of trails, which explore grassy valleys, chaparral-cloaked ridges and native groves of coastal live oak and sycamore. In winter and spring, the valleys are usually a deep green, sprinkled with lupine and blue-eyed grass. This is a dry year, however, and the grassland is quickly assuming its summer gold color.

The park’s centerpiece is oak-lined Bell Canyon where acorns from the oaks were an important food source for the Juaneno Indians who lived there. As the legend goes, the Indians would strike a large granite boulder with a small rock to make it ring. The sound could be heard for a mile through what is now known as Bell Canyon. “Bell Rock” now resides in Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.

Bell Canyon, San Juan Canyon and surrounding ridges were once part of Starr-Viejo Ranch, which Orange County purchased in the early 1970s. The park honors former chairman of the Orange County board of supervisors Ronald W. Caspers, who was instrumental in preserving the old ranch as a park.

Reminders of the park’s ranch heritage include a windmill and a wooden corral, where the branding and loading of cattle took place. The windmill still pumps a little water, which helps park wildlife make it through the summers. The area around the windmill is the park’s best bird-watching spot during summer.

To learn more about the region’s human and natural history, stop at the park’s visitor center. Exhibits interpret Native American life, birds, mammals, geology and more. On weekends, park rangers lead nature walks. For more information about Caspers Wilderness Park and its interpretive programs, call (714) 728-0235.

The mostly level Nature Trail-Oak Trail-Bell Canyon Trail loops are only one of many possible day hikes you can fashion from the park’s extensive trail network. The park’s map is keyed to numbered posts located at trail junctions, so it’s easy to design a hike that suits your time or energy level.

If you’re an early riser and beat the heat, ascend one of the park’s exposed ridges, either via West Ridge Trail or East Ridge Trail. The latter connects to Bell Canyon Trail. From the higher ridges, fine views are yours: To the north are the mile-high twin peaks of Saddleback Mountain, highest point in Orange County and to the west and south, you can see San Juan Capistrano, the Pacific and, on an exceptionally clear day, San Clemente Island.

Directions to trailhead: From Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano, take the California 74 (Ortega Highway) exit. Drive eight miles inland to the entrance to Caspers Wilderness Park. There’s a $1.50-per-vehicle entrance fee. Each adult must obtain a wilderness permit at the entry kiosk. Remember, no solo hiking and no kids on the trails.

From the entry kiosk, take the park road 1 1/2 miles to its end at the corral and windmill. There’s plenty of parking near the signed trailhead for Nature Trail.

The hike: Nature Trail loops through a handsome grove of antiquarian oak. You might see woodpeckers checking their store of acorns, which the birds have stuffed in holes in the nearby sycamores. Beneath the oaks are some huge patches of poison oak, but the trail steers clear of them.

You’ll pass a junction with a left-branching trail, which leads to Gunsight Pass and West Ridge Trail, and soon arrive at a second junction. (If you want a really short hike, keep right at this junction and you’ll loop back to the trailhead via Nature Trail.)

Head north on signed Oak Trail, which meanders beneath the oaks and sycamores that shade the west wall of Bell Canyon. The trail never strays far from bone-dry Bell Creek, its stream bed or sandy washes. During this drought year, it’s difficult to imagine that in the last century, black bears used to catch spawning steelhead trout in Bell Creek.

Fragrant sages perfume the trail, which is also lined with lemonade berry and prickly pear cactus.

Oak Trail reaches a junction at Post 12. You may take a short connector trail east through Bell Canyon or head north on another short trail, Star Rise, and join Bell Canyon Trail there. To return to the trailhead, you’ll head south on Bell Canyon Trail, which passes through open oak-dotted meadows. Red-tailed hawks roost atop spreading sycamores. The trail returns you to the parking area, within sight of the beginning of Nature Trail, where you began.

Bell Canyon Trail

4-mile loop through Caspers Wilderness Park.