Mon, Apr 18, 2011
|
With: | Evan Rasmussen |
Chuck Ramm |
I had driven for nine hours from San Jose to reach this desolate spot on the far
east side of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and managed about 4 hours of sleep
before the assigned meeting time. Evan's truck had been there at the junction
with Fish Creek Rd since the early evening, Chuck arriving at 6a after a short
drive from his friend's place at Ocotillo Wells where he had spent the night
(it's quite remarkable given the low population that anyone would actually have
a friend in this small desert community, but Chuck managed it). We unloaded
Evan's camper from the back of the truck in preparation for the bumpy ride up
Fish Creek Canyon, leaving it with the other two cars as we headed up the sandy
dirt road. It was 6:45a by the time we had driven the four miles up the canyon
to our starting point near the Wind Caves trailhead. I had been
up this road only four months earlier in December with Adam, aiming for the
same peak, Split Mtn West. On that first visit we had started from what we
thought was Oyster Shell Wash, but somehow managed to overshoot the peak by a
long shot and eventually found our way to the northwest summit of Split Mtn
West. Though the topo maps shows this point as definitely lower, it was sighted
by Wes Shelberg and others and declared the higher of the two points. At the
time Adam and I were pressed for daylight and still wanted to get to Split Mtn
East, so we decided the northwest summit must be the correct one. Back in San
Jose I began to think maybe we had cheated things and decided I should make an
effort to reach the other summit as well. And so I was back again a few months
later. There was a second, lower summit labeled "Split Mtn" on the topo map,
identified by the USGS as the point for which the area is known, and to this
we were headed first since it was on the way.
Our route followed the ridgeline from the south
fairly directly, starting up a
steep sand slope that had developed a use trail over time. It had only gotten
to about 65F during the night and was already starting to warm up. We would be
happy to stay in the shade as much as possible, somewhat regretting that we
hadn't started an hour earlier. It had been reported to be very windy in the
park over the last week and though it had died down some, we would find windy
conditions fairly consistently over the next two days. Within a few minutes of
leaving the truck we were high enough for a swell view of the
Elephant Knees formation in the early
morning sun, behind us. One has to use some imagination to place the name with
the eroded slopes that were given the colorful moniker. To the northwest rose
the much higher
Whale Peak with the smaller hump of
Diablo BM (our later target) identifiable to the west. It's an
easy hike up to
Split Mtn, taking just under 45 minutes in
all. There was a
small cairn to mark the summit, but little else. The
top has a fine view of the Fish Creek Mtns to
the southeast and the
deep
Fish Creek Canyon that we had driven up this morning. It is easy
to see how the name Split Mtn came about - it looks like the range was cleaved
in two by Fish Creek over the eons.
We spent about half an hour traversing between Split Mtn and the
higher Split Mtn West
to the north. At the end there was some easy
class 2-3 scrambling up the southeast side of
the summit,
about 100ft or so. Here we found
several registers,
really just collections of scrap paper stuffed into a couple of
plastic bottles. It was such a mess that none of us bothered to open them to
add our names or even look at them. Of more interest was whether the
other Split Mtn West (which I've since dubbed Split Mtn Northwest) was
in fact higher. Others before us were confused enough to bring to bear handheld
surveying levels, so I didn't expect we'd have much to add to the discourse. It
was impossible to tell from
a cursory look
in that direction because the higher
Vallecito Mtns behind it offered no horizon with which to compare. I felt
satisfied having visited both, but I don't think Chuck cared much one way or
the other and certainly Evan didn't - he was just out for the exercise, fresh
air and my charming companionship.
On the descent we dropped southwest into a wash that offered a bit of shade and
a change of scenery. Though the
initial descent at the start offered what looked
like a bit of fun scrambling, it quickly mellowed to a very easy descent route
with none of the dry waterfall obstacles we'd found in the canyons on the first
visit to the area. It was just past 9:30a when
we returned to Evan's
truck - less than three hours total for the effort.
Next up was a visit to Diablo BM, almost ten miles further west along Fish Creek
Wash. This part we expected to make for a more challenging drive (and why we
had Evan's truck) but an easier hike. We followed the wash south initially,
turning southwest and west in a serpentine manner. After several miles I grew
uneasy that we were heading in the wrong direction, more southwest when we
could see Diablo BM to the northwest. When the road failed to turn in the
proper direction after more time, I had Evan stop so that we could check the
GPSr that I had inconveniently left in the back of the truck. After several
minutes, it was confirmed that the wash turned northwest not a hundred yards
further ahead. Evan gave me the knowing smile, but failed to take full
advantage of his see-I-told-you-so opportunity. More miles went by in the soft
washbed serving for a road, and it wasn't until we had just passed the
turnoff to Sandstone Canyon that we noticed it. We chose an unfortunate place
to stop the truck as it proved to be a deep sandbed that we quickly bogged down
in. We took the tire pressure down from 80psi to 50psi, shoveled out some sand,
and tried to push the truck out while giving it some gas, to no avail.
Eventually we took the pressure down further to 30psi and with more
shoveling
and pushing managed to extract it. We drove about a mile and a half up
Sandstone
Canyon before the road became
impassable to non-4WD vehicles,
a good place
to park and start our hike.
We were fairly close, about a mile and a half from the summit, though it wasn't
visible from our position deep in the canyon. Sandstone Canyon turned out to
be an interestingly narrow canyon with high,
near-vertical walls and cool
geologic processes in evidence. A mile up the canyon we came to
the sign
indicating the motor vehicle limit, and it was here that we chose to climb out
of the main canyon through
a narrow slot rising up on the left side. In less
than five minutes this led to the more
open terrain on
the slopes east of
Diablo BM. The "peak" is little more than a side bump on the southeast side of
the much higher Whale Peak, though somewhat more interesting (because of
Sandstone Canyon) than we had anticipated. It took just under an hour to reach
the highpoint of
the summit ridge, finding the summit register
nearer to the (slightly lower) south end where
the benchmark is
located. Chuck managed to
locate a geocache that had been well hidden nearer to the highpoint.
Our views took in the Vallecito Mtns to the north and
east, the Fish Creek
Mtns to the southeast, the Carrizo Valley and Badlands to the south, the
Tierra Blanca Mtns to the southwest and the Laguna Mtns further west behind
them. We followed a descent route more
directly off
the east side of the
summit, more for the adventure of making it a loop route than in finding a
better way back. The
descent canyon we used to drop into the main
Sandstone
Canyon proved to be a trivial exercise, without any of the cliffs or dry
waterfalls we half-expected to encounter. Our only problem was in trusting
Evan when we rejoined Sandstone Canyon as he led us upstream in search of the
truck. Though I had reservations, I failed to do a simple check of the GPSr
which would have easily confirmed we were heading in the wrong direction. It
wasn't until we encountered the No Vehicles sign we'd passed on the way
in that it was obvious to all of us. Turning around, we
got back to the truck by 1:15p.
After a short break to rehydrate,
we drove back out to Split Mtn Road and the
other vehicles. Chuck left us at this point, heading back to San Diego and
civilization while Evan and I discussed what to do with the rest of the
afternoon. We paid a visit to the
Elephant Trees area, home of these rare
(in California, more common further south in Mexico) trees. We hiked the length
of the Elephant Trees Trail, disappointed to find only
a single live tree along
its one-mile length. Later we learned that the larger collection of trees can
be found further east up the broad wash several more miles. Conveniently, this
is on the way to Vallecito East (another SDC peak) and I hope to use this route
to reach the peak at a future date. We drove back out to SR78 and then west
to the turnoff for Sunset Mtn which we planned to tackle in the morning. It
was 6:40p by the time we'd found a suitable
place to camp for the night, but I was not yet done.
A last minute perusal of the maps revealed that
Perpendicular Bluff, a delisted
SDC peak, was a short distance north of the highway, barely a mile from where
we'd parked. Evan had had enough by this time, content to let me run off on my
own. I made good time in the fading light of the late afternoon. The sun was
setting on the
Vallecito Mtns behind me,
with some
high clouds overhead providing some
nice lighting
as the sun faded shortly after 7p. It was 7:20p when I reached
the benchmark whose coordinate I had entered in the GPSr (it may have
taken considerably more time to locate it otherwise). This proved fortuitous
because I'd found the wind had picked up to gale force by the time I reached
the top and it was all I could do to keep from being blown off the top. It was
bloody cold, too, as I scrambled into my pack for my fleece and gloves and hat.
Without the GPSr, I
probably would have lacked the patience to continue a search for the benchmark
and register in such conditions.
The register had been been placed in
1995 by
Mark Adrian and contained few other entries, most of those by
Wes Shelberg at
later dates. The
most recent entry,
dating back only a few months to January,
had been by Chuck Ramm. We hadn't ever spoken about this delisted peak before
so it was somewhat surprising to find his name once again in such a seemingly
random fashion. Chuck gets out to this area more than he lets on.
It was 7:45p before I returned to the highway
following a very quick descent in
an effort to avoid needing a headlamp. A hasty outdoor shower in windy
conditions (no longer gale force, thank heaven) was followed by dinner in Evan's
camper before bedding down for the night in the back of the van. It had been
a full, but enjoyable day. With plans for more of the same to follow, and
tired from both the day and little sleep the previous night, I had no trouble
falling asleep despite the blowing winds. Evan fared a bit worse as his
high profile camper shell was rocked irratically during the night, far worse
than the van. Score one for the van...
Continued...
This page last updated: Thu Dec 21 08:53:13 2017
For corrections or comments, please send feedback to: snwbord@hotmail.com