Jim Preston, trail lead with the Ventana Wilderness Alliance, wrote in the other day to say the Los Padres National Forest and Ventana Wilderness will open May 1 (except for the Pine Ridge Trail, which still has major fire damage).

Best source for Ventana hikers is www.ventanawild.org. Updates on the Pine Ridge Trail here. (And you can find some hints on Big Sur redwoods hiking in this thread).

I’ve linked to this before, I suspect, but what the heck: great ghost stories of the Ventana,