{"id":120873,"date":"2026-01-05T15:39:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T15:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/120873\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T15:39:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T15:39:19","slug":"a-guide-to-montecito-hot-springs-where-you-can-soak-in-a-rustic-oasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/120873\/","title":{"rendered":"A guide to Montecito Hot Springs, where you can soak in a rustic oasis"},"content":{"rendered":"

p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n

The water bubbles up hot from the earth and sunlight filters down through the branches of mighty oaks.<\/p>\n

But before you can soak in Santa Barbara County\u2019s highly popular Montecito Hot Springs, you\u2019ll need to hike a little over a mile uphill, threading your way among boulders, oaks and a meandering creek. And before the hike, there are two other crucial steps: getting to the trailhead and knowing what to expect.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The trail to Montecito Hot Springs.<\/p>\n

These rustic spring pools are about 95 miles northwest of L.A. City Hall, just upslope from well-to-do Montecito, whose residents include Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, and Gwyneth Paltrow.<\/p>\n

Though the trail and hot springs are part of Los Padres National Forest, the trailhead is in a residential neighborhood of gated mansions. Beyond the trailhead parking area (which has room for eight or nine cars), the neighborhood includes very little curbside parking. After visitation surged during the pandemic, some neighbors were accused by county officials of placing boulders to obstruct public parking<\/a>. Parking options were reduced further when county officials added parking restrictions<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Share via Close extra sharing options <\/p>\n

Bottom line: Unless you can arrive on a weekday between 8 and 10 a.m., you\u2019re probably better off taking a rideshare service to get there. Whenever you arrive, you\u2019re likely to have company. And you might want to wait until the landscape dries out a bit from the rains of recent weeks.<\/p>\n

As Los Padres National Forest spokesman Andrew Madsen warned, \u201cthe foothills of Santa Barbara are especially fragile and hiking is especially precarious in the aftermath of heavy rains.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that said, the hike is rewarding and free. From the Hot Springs Canyon trailhead at East Mountain Drive and Riven Rock Road, it\u2019s a 2.5-mile out-and-back trail to the hot springs, with about 800 feet of altitude gain on the way.<\/p>\n

Arriving at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, I got the last parking spot at the trailhead, stepped past the signs forbidding parking before 8 a.m. or after sunset, then stepped past another sign warning that \u201cthis is a challenging and rugged hike.\u201d Also, there are no bathrooms or trash cans on the trail or at the springs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that people know what\u2019s going on up there before they show up,\u201d said Madsen. \u201cIt\u2019s not all that glamorous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though it\u2019s only 1.2 or 1.3 miles to the hot springs, plan on about an hour of uphill hiking. Once you\u2019re above the residential lots, you\u2019ll see pipes along the way, carrying water down the hill, along with occasional trailside poison oak. As you near the pools, you\u2019ll pick up the scent of sulfur and notice the water turning a strange bluish hue. Then the trail jumps across the creek \u2014 which I initially missed.<\/p>\n

But there was a silver lining. That detour gave me a chance to admire the stone ruins of a hotel that was built next to the springs in 1870s. After a fire, it became a private club. Then it burned in the Coyote fire of 1964<\/a>, which blackened more than 65,000 acres, destroyed more than 90 homes and killed a firefighter. The hot springs and surrounding land have been part of Los Padres National Forest since 2013.<\/p>\n

\"Hikers <\/p>\n

Hikers look west from the ruins near Montecito Hot Springs.<\/p>\n

(Christopher Reynolds \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

On a clear day with the sun in the right place, you can stand among the overgrown ruins, look west and see the ocean, a few old oil platforms and the long, low silhouette of Santa Cruz Island. This is what the native Chumash would have seen (minus the oil platforms) through the many years they used the springs before European immigrants arrived.<\/p>\n

Pleasant as that view was, I was ready to soak, as were the two couples who got momentarily lost with me. (We were all Montecito Hot Springs rookies.) Once we\u2019d retraced our steps to the creek and crossed it, the trail took us quickly past a hand-lettered CLOTHING OPTIONAL sign to a series of spring-fed pools of varying temperatures.<\/p>\n

A dozen people were already lazing in and around the uppermost pools (one woman topless, one man bottomless), but several pools remained empty. I took one that was about 2 feet deep and perhaps 90 degrees. In one pool near me sat Ryan Binter, 30, and Kyra Rubinstein, 26, both from Wichita, Kan.<\/p>\n

\"Hikers <\/p>\n

Hikers Ryan Binter and Kyra Rubinstein, visiting from Wichita, Kan., soak at Montecito Hot Springs.<\/p>\n

(Christopher Reynolds \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cShe found this,\u201d said Binter, praising Rubinstein\u2019s internet search savvy.<\/p>\n

At the next pool were Emanuel Leon, 20, of Carpinteria, Calif., and Evelyn Torres, 19, of Santa Barbara. The last time they\u2019d tried this hike, they\u2019d strayed off-track and missed the hot springs, so this time, they were savoring the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cRevenge!\u201d said Leon, settling in.<\/p>\n

The soaking was so mellow, quiet and unhurried that I was surprised to learn that the pools were not erected legally. As Madsen of the Los Padres National Forest explained later by phone, they were \u201ccreated by the trail gnomes\u201d \u2014 hikers arranging rocks themselves to adjust water flow and temperature, with no government entities involved.<\/p>\n

Legal or not, they made a nice reward after the hike uphill. The downhill hike out was easier and quicker, of course, but still tricky because of the rocks and twisting trail.<\/p>\n

On your way out of Montecito, especially if it\u2019s your first time, take a good look at the adobe-style grandeur of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church building, which looks like it was smuggled into California from Santa Fe. For food and drink, head to Coast Village Road (the community\u2019s main drag) or the Montecito Village Shopping Center on East Valley Road. Those shops and restaurants may not match the wonder and comfort of a natural bath in the woods, but for civilization, they\u2019re not bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> The water bubbles up hot from the earth and sunlight filters down through the branches of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[9664,63667,29920,48,52,51,47,50,49,29513,2663,63668,1459,22562,63665,1800,36898,8534,63666,646,8843],"class_list":["post-120873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-county-official","tag-creek","tag-hike","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-padres-national-forest","tag-mile","tag-parking-option","tag-part","tag-pool","tag-rustic-hot-spring-oasis","tag-santa-barbara-county","tag-temperature","tag-trail","tag-trailhead","tag-water","tag-way"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}