Continued...
The Little Picacho Wilderness encompasses a moderately large amount of the
desert between Picacho Rd and the Colorado River in the easternmost part of
Imperial County. The highpoint is Ridge BM though PB currently has Mala Pais BM,
about 50ft lower, incorrectly listed as the Wilderness HP. Both have over 700ft
of prominence and seemed reasonable to do in a day. In fact, we were able to
tag on a few additional easy ones after that. In the interest of honest
reporting, this was one of my least favorite desert outings. The problem stems
from the nature of the terrain we covered on the first two peaks. The whole
area has seen extensive volcanism and the southern section of the Wilderness
is covered in brown and black desert-varnished rocks. The toaster-sized rocks
were thrown up in a cataclysmic
eruption, littering the ground in what I dubbed, "volcanic vomit." They are no
fun to travel over as one has to be constantly aware of foot placement, watching
for loose rocks and ankle-turners, with no enjoyable scrambling to be found over
any of it. The stuff covers many square miles and becomes tedious very quickly.
Mala Pais BM
From our campsite adjacent to the All American Canal, we drove up Picacho Rd
until we were almost due west of our summit, a little more than three miles
away. There is little parking to be found along the road here, but eventually we
found a small turnout above the berm on the west side of the road where we
could park Matt's Subaru. From here, appears as a dark bump
on a long, like-colored ridgeline in the distance. The first several miles were
across the broad flats of (yes, that's actually the name of
it, ironically) and this was fairly pleasant with the usual benign desert
landscape. It appears that we could have driven some of this as we found
ourselves crossing a signed
about half a mile from Picacho Rd. I have no idea how to access this road,
however. It was only upon reaching the base of the main ridge that we came upon
the volcanic vomit strewn about the place, leaving little of the earth uncovered
and little room for vegetation to grow. We went around a first ridge to the
north, knowing our summit was on the next ridge behind us. This took us up a
before we could climb out onto
leading to our summit. Much boulder and rock hopping/stepping eventually led us
to the summit after almost 2hrs. Ugh, ugh. Richard Carey had left a register
with the second visitor not appearing until six years later -
Richard Carey again, it turns out. Masochist? Perhaps. The
were all from the collection of usual suspects, to no great surprise. It's just
not the sort of peak that invites random visitors to its summit.
From our perch atop Mala Pais BM we could see that the troublesome rocks
continued the entire way across the Wilderness to . Ridge BM
was less
than 2.5mi to the NE and we had originally planned to do both in a large loop
but that was looking decidedly less fun at the moment. I had another approach
from the east that we could use to reach the second peak, so the original plan
began to fall apart. Most of the others felt much as I did about the terrain,
but Scott seemed to find some pleasure in it (or perhaps didn't dislike
it as much as us). We made a new plan whereby some could continue across the
Wilderness to Ridge BM while the others drove around to the east side to meet
them atop the HP. Scott was enthusiastically in favor of the former but soon
found himself in an extreme minority. To be fair, I actually considered joining
him just for the (mis)adventure all those rocks would bring but I wasn't sure
I could correctly get the others to the second TH without giving them my GPSr.
Or so I would like to believe. In any event, it would be Scott heading out on
his own with the rest of us returning from whence we'd come.
We didn't return the same way, Evan talking us into a looping route,
off the summit initially, before
to descend
on the westernmost ridge that we had skirted around to the north on the way
up. We had cell contact with Scott who had veered off to tag a bonus peak before
heading to Ridge BM, and periodically we would send him some tidbit or he
likewise, so it sort of felt like he was still with us on adventure. The most
interesting find we had was that of a small plane wreck, a
that littered the ground with bits of
, engine parts and such. It was
more than a few decades old, by the looks of it. Back across Unnamed Wash, we
eventually got back to and our car around 10a.
Ridge BM
We then spent an hour
driving south, east and back north to the other side of the Wilderness, getting
within about 1.6mi of our summit which was nearly due west. We had dropped Evan
off back at camp on our way as he'd had enough already, leaving Karl, Matt and
I to continued. We didn't take the best choice of roads at the end of our
drive and may have been able to get a mile closer, but our
would work fine. We headed west up the poor road before
joining we probably should have taken. We worked our way
uphill to the backside of the Hess Mine, finding an old,
that helped
get us higher up towards the main ridgeline. In time, the road gave out and we
found ourselves back on the unpleasant rock we had spent so much effort in
avoiding. Once atop , we still had almost half a mile of this
unpleasantry to follow towards the northwest and our summit. About an hour after
we starting out, we found
at waiting patiently for us - it
was now about 4hrs since we'd been atop Mala Pais BM and he'd beaten us to the
second summit by half an hour or so. He reported the traverse between the two
as "not so bad," which is Scott's way of saying it sucked. Or at least that's
how I wanted to interpret it. There was a benchmark but no register, so we left
our version of the latter before heading back. We took a more direct route off
the summit in an effort to avoid the endless rock fields, with marginal
success. Back down on the old mining road system, an elderly gentleman came
driving by on with a friendly wave, the only other person we'd
see while out hiking the whole day. By 1:15p we were to Matt's
car, happy to be done with these two.
Mine Peak
We drove back to camp for the second time. Scott needed to drive home, so we
bade him goodbye. With a few hours of daylight remaining, Matt and I were still
game while Karl decided to call it a day and hang with Evan at camp. Matt and
I then drove up Picacho Rd for the second time (I didn't really have this all
planned out as well as usual, thus the repeat driving up the same roads), this
time heading for a few easy summits listed in Purcell's
Rambles & Scrambles.
lies about a mile east of Picacho Rd in
the same Wilderness, but without the tedious rocks found in the southern
part. We followed
or about a mile before climbing 600ft up
moderately steep slopes to the summit, nothing more than class 2. There was a
large but no register - we were fresh out of new ones and
unable to leave one. There is a nice view of Picacho Peak to ,
though hazy skies washed out some of . The whole hike took
less than a hour and a half.
Pebble Mountain
This one is embarassingly short, or as Purcell puts it, "super-lame but makes
for a shamelessly easy bonus peak". It's covered in the same rock that made the
the first two peaks less than stellar, but the short distance is easily
tolerated - less than a quarter mile . There are two
points vying for the highpoint and as we were unable to ascertain which might
be highest, we visited both. One held a Mark Adrian register
with no other entries,
but this is likely due to the lack of a writing instrument. We, too, left it
unsigned. This last outing took but 25min and we
just after 4:30p. It would be dark before we got back to our campsite,
making for a brisk shower before dinnertime. Matt cooked up the remaining of
his that we gobbled up like hungry wolves. Mmmm...
Matt's Video
Continued...