Ray Ford

Ray Ford joined Noozhawk as an outdoors writer in late 2016. He has been hiking, backpacking and bike riding the Santa Barbara area since the 1970s when Dick Smith’s photography and reporting lured him to taking his first trip into the backcountry. Ray is well-known for his guidebooks and maps of our area, including Trails of the San Rafael Wilderness, Santa Barbara Day Hikes and Santa Barbara Mountain Biking. In 1990 Ray’s classic, Santa Barbara Wildfires, profiled nine of Santa Barbara’s major fires from the Refugio Fire in 1955 to the Painted Cave Fire in 1990, led him to focus on the underlying issues relating wildfires in our area and coverage of them. Since the Zaca Fire in 2007, Ray has provided in depth reporting from the field on every local wildfire, including most recently the Sherpa and Rey Fires.