Continued...
Today was a grab bag of various summits in Imperial County, including
Wilderness highpoints and below sea level summits at the edge of the
Salton Sea. Some were rather short, others of medium length, none very
difficult, but the collection kept me busy from sunrise to sunset.
Algodones Dunes Wilderness HP
These are some of the in the state, found along SR78 east
of the Salton Sea. The of the highway is Wilderness, but the
south side is designated as the Imperial Dunes Recreation Area and
appears to be a popular OHV area. Walking about a mile through dunes is
usually enough for me, but the highpoint was more than 2.5mi from the
highway and I would tire of the sand well before I ever reached the
highpoint. I was amused by one TR on PB that described tagging all three
contour points shown on the topo that could be the highpoint. In reality,
the dunes don't match the topo very well as they shift from year to
year with the winds and weather. I think the best one can do is hike out
to the highpoint coordinate, climb the biggest dune and
around. This worked nicely and I seemed to find myself on the highest dune of
those I could see for at least a mile . Good enough. The most
interesting find were some type of mushroom/fungus growing in the sand,
some with going down six inches or more
into the sand. How
these manage to grow here with so little water is a bit of a mystery,
but they were fairly common as I came across dozens of specimens on my
walk to the highpoint and back.
Salton Sea - Red Hill/Red Island/Rock Hill/Obsidian Butte
After having climbed the below sea level summits in Death Valley earlier in
the season, I wanted to complete the collection with those at the edge of
the Salton Sea. Google Maps does a good job of getting one to the three
different starting points. Red Hill/Red Island are at the
same location. Though part of the Red Hill Marina County Park, both are
for No Trespassing, though it's not clear why. This
looks to be dying as the water's edge has moved away from the "marina" with the
shrinking sea. Red Hill has a small just outside a
. (this probably WAS an island
years ago, but no longer) overlooks and several geothermal
plants operating in the area. Lots
of debris and crap around, which makes for a pretty sad set of summits.
Rock Hill is the nicest of the collection. You have to park at the
and walk about a mile to the summit. No
fees, and there are directing you to the way along the
outskirts of the . The trail goes almost to the
summit, though is signed for Area Closed. A use trail
leading from the wooden fence suggests it is regularly disregarded. Nice views
looking and the shoreline as well as to
the bird sanctuary.
Obsidian Butte is virtually a drive-up, in fact would be with a beefy 4WD. I
parked and walked the short distance up to .
It looks to have been quarried in the past and the place looks rather sad. I
didn't see much obsidian here (Mark McCormick says you can find it on the north
side), but I did see quite a bit at Rock Hill earlier.
Sunrise Butte
This was a freebie on of SR98 on my way to the next
summit. Someone once had an eclectic homestead on of the
summit, now mostly demolished. surround the place including the
summit, but they are easy to breach and have been done so by many a
visitor. The summit has a platform erected atop it
with steel stairs leading up and a large cross in the center with
Christmas lights on it that used to be powered by a battery. The platform
overlooks the badlands of the Yuha Desert to the north as well as SR98.
Jacumba Wilderness Prominence Point
Some old paved BLM roads lead off SR98 to get you within 1.5mi of the
summit which lies in the southeast corner of the Wilderness less than
half a mile from the Mexican border. White Border Patrol trucks are a
common sight on the roads all along the border, as one might imagine. I
drove in and started hiking across the desert
without having seen anyone since I left the highway. After about 15min I
happen to look back and see a white truck. Ah - there's one now. I looked
some more and spotted in his dark green uniform hiking
towards me, waving. I could have just kept going as there was no way he
was going to catch up, but I decided to help the poor fellow out and
walked back to meet him. Officer Alvarez was a bit portly and sweating
pretty good. I suspect someone spied me from a distance and he was the
nearest grunt sent to investigate. He asked if I was out hiking and for
how long, though really he just wanted to make sure I wasn't a foreign
national or a good samartan helping out the aliens. Satisfied
that I was neither, we parted and I continued on my way. I climbed the
more or less directly to the summit, taking an hour for the
1,300-foot climb, a standard class 2 desert ascent. The is
almost entirely within Mexico, with
some impressively high summits in the background - does anyone climb
those? Mark Adrian of the San Diego's Monday Maniacs had left a register
here and most of the 10 pages were return trips by the
Maniacs, most often led by John Strauch. I dropped off the next minor
ridge to the north of my ascent line, eventually ending up in
with some . Judging by
the discarded trash and a fresh ,
it seems the wash is at least periodically
used by folks crossing into the US. While crossing back over the
desert flats to the van, I noted from the truck that
came to visit me cutting through the Wilderness boundary.
It doesn't seem the Border Patrol cares
too much for Wilderness regulations. All in the name of keeping us free
from those criminals and drug cartels my President keeps telling me about.
Coyote Mountains Wilderness HP
The highpoint of the Coyote Mtns is Carrizo Mtn, a peak I climbed some years
before. The Wilderness area carves out Carrizo Mtn, leaving two other points
of interest, the Wilderness HP and the Wilderness PP (prominence point) which
I was after. It was almost 4:45p by the time I'd driven through Ocotillo to
the south side of the range and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get to both of
them in one go. I found the BLM road leading into Fossil Canyon to be pretty
decent and got the van within a few miles of the Wilderness HP. Rather than
hike the road further into Fossil Canyon which would be a bit circuitous, I
headed directly up .
This started off looking pretty iffy and I
thought I was going to get lost in the convoluted twists of ridges and gullies
in the badlands at the base of the mountain. But once I came upon
, I was able to follow it up to the first
seen from below,
avoiding unnecessary ups ands downs. At this first ridge, one can finally view
4/5mi further north across a wide drainage. Fortunately, this
drainage isn't very deep and I only had to lose about 100ft of elevation before
starting up to .
All class 2 once I left the use
trail, nothing difficult but no good scrambling, either. It had taken a bit over
an hour and the sun was getting noticeably lower in the sky. John Vitz had
left a register here
with three other pages of entries, most of the
names from the usual suspects. The Wilderness PP was another 2mi to the west
and it was clear I'd get back well after dark if I went after it. I decided to
save it for the first thing next morning when I was fresh. It wasn't the
nighttime I was worried about really, mostly I was just too tired by now. Time
to head down.
went pretty much along the same lines as the ascent, getting me back
just before sunset around 6:45p. I moved the van only a short distance up
Fossil Canyon Rd to a wide, flat clearing where I could spend the night. Shower,
beer, dinner, in that order - roughly corresponding to their order of
desireability after a long, warm day...
Continued...