As a Getaway, Rustic Canyon Is Only Natural

Part of what protects Holy Jim Canyon is the back-country road leading there.

It can tear the bottom out of an ordinary car or drown it in four creek crossings.

It is wild back there. Rains can flood the canyon and block your retreat. Wildfires can scorch the mountainsides and the scattered cabins. Only those who have been there know it’s worth the effort and the risk.

Branching from the uppermost part of Trabuco Canyon, Holy Jim Canyon is sheltered under a canopy of sycamores and watered year round by a creek.

Here there is no electricity, piped-in water or piped-in gas. Commercial radio stations dissolve into static. Cellular phones are impotent. It is populated by those who find such things temporarily or perpetually obnoxious. Most come to retreat, but a few live here year-round.

“Up here, I don’t have to listen to the sounds of fax machines and telephones,” says Pete McGehee, a businessman escaping business pressures.

Mountain bikers and ultra-marathon runners use the steep trails and mountainous roads to train. Hikers explore the oak-sheltered trails.

Most return to civilization the same day. Soon after they leave the canyon, city lights reappear on the horizon, and the smell of sycamores is replaced by the smell of fast food.

And perhaps they are amazed anew that Holy Jim is only six miles off the mainstream.