Moments in Dirt and Ink

Yuma BLM Click for map. Morning brings much cooler weather and a lot more time to do a bit more hiking. I expect it to get hot again, "same as yesterday" always being the most likely true weather report, so load in a bit of extra water. And since I don't like to repeat things so much, I figure I'll go up along the ridge looking for the high point and come down on the trail across the canyon from the road. I expect the start for that is just to start up the trail toward the cross. Asking someone to be sure only elicits that it probably is, but someone on something, probably Alltrails, says the trail is rather faint. Well, ridges aren't hard to follow, although following them is often just half of the story. That is certainly true just across the river. Back at the beginning with the sign advertising its challenge to come out and do laps to the top on April 8th. This time I'll go for the scrambly trail up to the left. The trail is steeper than it...

Yuma BLM Click for map. I checked out the Pioneer Cemetery in Yuma in the morning and did a few chores, then arrived at the trailhead for Telegraph Pass in the early afternoon with my outdoor thermometer reading 83°F. Hum, is that something I want to do? Intel on the ground (that is, by asking random passers by from Oregon who had just hiked it) is that it's only about a mile of flat and then a mile of like 40% grade on paving. Oh, and there are Gila monsters. I've never seen Gila monsters! He walked it back to big lizards about so long with ringed tails. This I'm not less excited about. I've seen lizards about so long before. But it sounds easy enough for the afternoon. I do want to go ahead and get the geocaches along the way, which seem to generally be rated on the difficult side, so that'll give me some moments to sit and sign and take a breather in the steep portion. So onward, but with quite a lot of water. At the start of the trail to "Teleg...

Yuma BLM I noticed a pair of mysterious fences near the road while traveling back from one of my hikes. I stopped to read the sign of the nearest, which provided an explanation, and have returned today to actually see what they encompass. That most ephemeral and uncertain bit of ancient art: the geoglyph. And past the sign, narrow and long within the fence boundaries, is the preserved geoglyph. I rather suspect that without the sign, the fence would have been cut by now. As advertised, there are lines where the rocks have been removed from the generally flat and rock strewn surface of the plain. The first geoglyph from end to end.

El Centro BLM Click for map. Today I aim to add another Pilot Knob to my list. It just feels right to do. This one isn't very big, so shouldn't take very long, at least if I do it directly without any extras. It has a benchmark, but off on another peak to the west. There seems to be a bit of that going around. And then I may as well grab the geocaches. They look to be generally on a path going up to West Pilot (the benchmark), then Pilot Knob, then down again. I drive in directly and grab a bit of "parking" in a convenient spot between the road and a sign forbidding vehicles behind it. That leaves some flat desert with minor washes to cross between me and the peak. I gather the usual way to go would be to jog over to the east where there is a quarry and park there, but this looks at least as good to me and doesn't involve being in a quarry. Pilot Knob and West Pilot. West Pilot (on the right) seems pretty big too. I spot numerous trails up as I wal...

El Centro BLM Click for map. When I first looked southwest from a high point in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains, it seemed that Mexico was somehow demarcated in a different color by nature. Of course the color line had to actually be something else and the border doesn't quite run right there. Turns out the something else is sand dunes. These aren't just any sand dunes either. The Algodones Dunes, also known as the Imperial Dunes, are famous on stage and screen. Well, maybe just screen. These dunes "played" Tatooine in Star Wars. And I thought I might see them on a weekday, but it is already Friday (morning) and they are an absolute mad house. A quad and a bike take off across the sand over the well established tracks. The road in has frequent pit toilets and is lined with campers and toy haulers all presumably with permits. The dunes have a low area that is a veritable highway of tracks to get out into it all and high areas where people play. The hi...

El Centro BLM Click for map. (Purple and orange lines.) I am back for another try at the Tumco benchmark and the high point of the Cargo Muchacho Mountains. This time, there will be no wishy-washy moments where I think one bit of plan is as good as another and just go for the one that involves the climbing right in front of me. There will be self discipline and I will stick to the plan. Also, I have stacked the deck and chosen a route that I think will not include any temptation to leave the plan. I am going to follow the reach published for the Tumco benchmark, or at least my best interpretation of it, and then follow the ridge on up to the high point. The azimuth can happen in between if I am feeling it at the moment. The way down can be either back the way I came or over the top, again depending on how I feel. Okay, so there are choices in there, but they come when I have solid information about what will be the one I'll like best. This time I am starting at the parking...

El Centro BLM Click for map. (Green and blue lines for this one.) After Stud Mountain , the other peak marked with a "1k" on its dot on the peakbagger map among the Cargo Muchacho Mountains is the unnamed high point. Well, surely I should visit the high point of this little range. For some reason, the surveyors have not seen fit to. They instead have placed a mark called Tumco (for the mine below) on the second highest point of the ridge a bit west of the peak. They placed their azimuth point on a peak even further west. That makes two more peaks I'd like to climb. The peakbaggers who have gone before (and offered any hint to their route) speak highly of popping over a pass with a mine high up it, then over a few more short passes on the far side before taking a wash up to the ridge between the high point and Tumco. The first fellow actually scrambled along the ridge first, possibly hitting the azimuth and traversing around the benchmark peak before climbing to ...

El Centro Field Office BLM Click for map. Two days ago was Pasadena Mountain, now on to Pasadena Peak. The peak is really just a warm up for the main bump of the day, Stud Mountain, but I have a feeling one had better get this peak before it gets flattened by mining concerns. This is one of two peaks in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains with 1000 foot prominence. The peakbagger web site helpfully marks their dots with a little "1k" to say, "This one sticks up a bit from its surroundings." I am using roads from the American Girl Wash for my approach to Pasadena Peak. They get me up the side pretty far, then I'll just have to wing it. To go up Stud Mountain, I am using a wash on the Pasadena Peak side, then will head down along a route people have posted on peakbagger using the north ridge back to a flat area that can drop into the top of American Girl Wash with only a few feet of climbing. I had actually wanted to start in the old town of Obregon, but for my...

El Centro Field Office, BLM Click for map. Now on to the main hike of the day: Pasadena Mountain. I know there's a trail up a lot of it because there's a geocache rather high up that claims to be the end of "the mystery trail". It doesn't say where the trail begins, though. I expect to try coming down it, but for up I'm trying a route I am calling "long and easy". How true that last bit is remains to be seen, but it looks to have a gentle climb. How wise it is to be using a "long" route when I only have a little over 4 hours to sunset also remains to be seen. A summary of "long and easy" is as follows: First I get myself to the north end of the mountain where even the USGS map, which seems reluctant to call anything around here a 4WD road says I better have that. From there, take a right into a large wash and just follow it up in a gentle climb until I've just slightly overshot the peak. Then turn left where there is...

El Centro Field Office, BLM Click for map. I thought I'd do something small before going on to something medium. I picked out a line during the drive up, but probably won't get to do it because I also picked out a couple geocaches to find. One is a multicache that I'm sort of hoping will just lead me along a route up. It seems like a sensible thing to do with a multicache to me, anyway. First, to grab a somewhat random parking spot. A 4WD vehicle can get closer, but there's not a lot of point. The appetizer. There's a bit of flat stuff between here and Ogilby Hills, but it isn't as long as it looks. Pasadena Mountain will be the main course later. So I head over toward the hills aiming at the first geocache which is a traditional one on a little outcrop that isn't part of my quickly and roughly plotted route at all, but I knew that would happen. Hiking to it is rough, but not hard. It's a spot overlooking the road, so of course I us...

Kofa National Wildlife Refuge Click for map. At only half a mile of trail, it is a bit shorter than my usual, but California fan palms are something special. Almost all of them are in California, but there are a few in Arizona and all of those are in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, according to the literature at the trailhead. These are snuggled into cracks in a canyon in Signal Peak. Besides this canyon, there is a Four Palms Canyon to the north and Old Palm Canyon to the south, so there might be some more palms in the area. This is the one with the road to it and since it is a west facing canyon, I thought it might be best to get to it in the afternoon. Approaching the canyon. Signal Peak is an impressive piece of landscape and does happen to be one of those high prominence peaks I'd like to go up. The entry to the canyon at the end of the road has some quite impressive cliffs. The rest of the area desert does not reach up quite so high. Signs at the...

Yuma BLM Click for map. Today I am going after the Ibex benchmark. It is not on that impressive peak I was looking at yesterday, but should give me another look at it to perhaps help plot an approach. To get up that one, I have picked a wash on the west side which is a fair bit of flat stuff south of Plomosa Road. A lot of this flat stuff does not even look to require high clearance, but I'm trying not to take the car places it's really not supposed to go, so I have to walk it. So I better get moving. A few hills to get past again, then out on the flats. There are two roads heading off where I thought I wanted to park and two roads headed off where I did park, but they aren't the same roads, so I am promptly headed off in somewhat the wrong direction. There are just a lot more roads on the land than on my various maps. I seem to be getting closer to a geocache and it is only a quarter mile out of my way and I might as well get it now that I'm "close...