Continued...
There was no escaping the storm spreading over the Southland, not even in
the Anza-Borrego desert as one might hope. Still, we managed pretty well
with some luck. We did the long hike in the morning to Marble Peak
where we were buffeted by strong winds and some snow, but no rain. In the
afternoon, back on the desert floor, the rain was heavier, but we managed
to do a handful of easy summits, mostly drive-ups, that we did in between
rain bursts. We had a a very civilized dinner at the Borrego Golf Resort,
watching it rain outside and glad to be warm and dry inside.
Marble Peak
This is a very obscure summit in the Santa Rosa Mtns that has little
prominence, but a lot of elevation gain to get to it. It is found in the
first edition of Zdon's
Desert Summit but was subsequently dropped
in the second edition - evidently even Zdon thought it too insignificant.
It is located south and below Rosa Point, overlooking the Palo Alto
Wash. We from S-22 at 7:20a, making our way up
,
pretty much following Zdon's route description. The walking in the wash
is fairly easy until one reaches a difficult impasse about 3mi up the
wash. Before reaching it, one needs to climb out onto the ridge to the
left. There is a convenient access point that has a very decent
going up to .
The use trail continues for most of
the way to Rosa Point. It goes through some pretty but dangerous
where one needs to watch foot placements carefully so as not to
pick up unwanted hitchhikers. About 2/3mi from Marble Peak, it is
necessary to drop off the ridge back into the wash on the right briefly
in order to climb up to Marble from the southwest side. It was nearly
10:15a when we reached the summit, about 3 hours' effort. It was blowing
hard and had just started snowing in earnest when we reached it.
were mostly non-existent as we found ourselves at
this elevation. We tried to take a break out of the wind
, but
it seemed to do little good and we grew cold before long. We a
rather battered in a broken plastic tub, hurriedly wrapping it
back up before
as our fingers grew numb. Things improved as
we dropped lower and it became more manageable. We descended the same
ridge all the way to the desert floor, avoiding Palo Alto Wash so we could
tag a few minor bumps lower on the ridge found on PB. We finished up
shortly before 1:30p,
plenty of daylight remaining but the weather more threatening.
Fonts Point/Inspiration Point
We needed some way to spend the
afternoon without getting too wet as the rain began more earnestly on the
desert floor. I had been to both of these, including a visit to Inspiration
Point just the previous day, but since the others had never been to
Fonts Point, I suggested we check it out. It's a very unassumming point
from the north as one drive several miles up a sandy wash.
from looking
into the Borrego Badlands are quite impressive and
both Karl and Patrick remarked how unexpected the view was. On the drive
back out, we stopped when we were about 1/3mi from Inspiration Point and
to that point, a bit lower and with similar views.
Metate Hill/Woods BM
Lastly, we sought out the summit of the very unimpressive Metate Hill. Our
first effort at a bend in the road on S-22 got us to a landfill with no way
to get across the desert due to a gate and private property signs. We
found another way from the southwest that worked to get us within about
400ft of the summit, traveling along rough sand roads through desert
flats and what seemed like spooky desert forest (a fire had ravaged the
wash trees, making it look unusually dark). itself isn't more
than about 10ft high and how it got on the USGS maps is a bit of a
mystery. Having so much fun just trying to find this one, we made a
similar effort to find our way to . This one was a drive up,
though we did have to trespass through the airport community just to the
north. Woods BM is at least more hill-like than Metate Hill, but it has
less than 10ft of prominence.
Finishing up by 4p, we went about taking showers using Patrick's new
hot shower setup, complete with instant-on water heater, a small pump with
a seven gallon reservoir, a propane tank to fuel the water heater and a
pop-up privacy shower. It was raining lightly during most of this
operation, but the trial was successful - nice hot showers on a rather
cold day. After packing it all away, we drove into Borrego Springs where
we got dinner at one of the golf course restaurants. We considered
it a good day and felt quite lucky that our morning hike worked so nicely
with the rough weather. The forecast has more wind for the next day but
sunny conditions. A most welcome break after the past few days...
Continued...