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
started from S-22 at 7:20a, making our way up
Palo Alto Wash,
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
use trail going up to 
the ridge.
The use trail continues 
up the ridge for most of
the way to Rosa Point. It goes through some pretty but dangerous
cholla gardens
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. 
Views
were mostly non-existent as we found ourselves 
in the clouds at
this elevation. We tried to take a break out of the wind
on one side, but
it seemed to do little good and we grew cold before long. We 
signed a
rather battered 
register in a broken plastic tub, hurriedly wrapping it
back up before 
heading down
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
back at S-22 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.
The views
from 
the top looking 
south
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
walked out 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).The hill 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 
Woods BM. 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...