Sunday, October 31, 2010

Anza Borrego Misc Trips

The last 3 weekends have been cold and rainy in San Diego so I decided to go out to Anza Borrego instead where it has been in the low 80's and sunny. First trip out was to Bisnaga Wash. This is a wash that flows from the Vallecito Mtns and is a potential backpack trip for me up to Whale Peak.

Entrance to Bisnaga Wash and the Vallecito Mtns in the background
Going up the wash
Looking up the "trail" towards the base of the mtns
Ocotillo
Looking back down towards highway
This is catclaw country

I also went out to Inner Pasture, this is an area just north of Canebrake and sits between Agua Caliente, Moonlight Canyon and Red Top. I don't think too many people go here, the only signs of life I saw were actually 4 sets of foot prints heading out of the canyon, illegal immigrants for sure. There were signs of illegal traffic in the wash, discarded, faded water bottles, clothing and even a 5 peso coin. There were a lot of animal tracks and scat, deer, coyote, mountain lion, etc.

Entrance to the canyon
This was about a 4' dry fall
Big Horn sheep or deer maybe
Trash bag full of clothing for the illegal traffic
Some camera filter trickery, the Sawtooth mtns are in the distance
Large concentration of mtn lion scat, the one in the middle was fresh and still had flies on it
The many morteros in the area are clues of past indian occupation
Arriving back to the truck at sunset I tried some more camera filters on the Vallecito Mtns
Moonrise over the Coyote Mtns
This was the GPS track of my hike

I went out with a friend and his wife the other day to try and find the elusive Solstice Cave. I did a lot of searching on the Internet and was only able to find vague references to it's general location. We hiked around for about 3 hours and finally Bob's wife found it while we were looking elsewhere. This cave is supposed to have some significance for the indians way back when, a ceremonial site and summer/winter solstice. Bob wrote up a nice trip report on his website AnzaBorrego.net

A collage of photos from Solstice Cave

You can see more photos of Anza Borrego here http://picasaweb.google.com/daren.sefcik

2 comments:

  1. That was a great find Daren,
    Glad you were with us to discover the Solstice Cave,
    What's next ? :-)

    Bob

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  2. Hey Daren,
    Here is my write-up of the trip.

    http://www.anzaborrego.net/Travel/AnzaBorrego/post/The-search-for-the-hidden-Solstice-Cave-in-Indian-Valley.aspx

    Lets hike out there on the next summer solstice.
    Bob

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