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Base Camp

The Northern Channel

If you were to drain the water from the Santa Barbara Channel, we would see that the 2-3,000’ high Santa Ynez Mountains are the northern side of a valley that extends across the Channel to be paralleled by the mountain peaks on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands. Between these two parallel mountain ranges we would find the marine terraces and mesas that now hold the urban development of the region, and then further out we would see a vast network of marine canyons surrounding the eight islands all the way down to San Clemente in the far south. And between these canyons and the island mountaintops are submerged mountains not tall enough to break sea level, but tall enough to create major divides between the undersea canyons.