Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Jacumba Mountains

Scotty "C"
Scotty "C" and I headed out to the Jacumba mountains area to hike down to Carrizo Gorge and explore some of the old train parts abandoned when the Carrizo Gorge railway was built. Turned out after my slow, sissy 4WD driving skills in my big Dodge crew cab truck were done we had spent most of the day stopping and exploring the surrounding area of the Jacumba Mountains and never made it down into the gorge. There were some interesting things to see along the way but I still want to go back and hike down into the gorge to find the old train parts and the abandoned railway camp.

1st wildlife guzzler we saw, we saw a total of three in the area

Old Indian hunting blind or just a modern man made windbreak..??

Possible Indian carvings, hard to tell

More possible Indian Carvings (a yoni?) again, hard to say for sure

...dumb ass people...

A small cave, one of many we saw scrambling the millions of boulders in the area.

Looking straight at Tule Mt in McCain Valley

Jacumba Mtn

Brilliant yellow moss on this and many other boulders

Crazy rock pattern, this was a HUGE boulder, I could probably put my fingers in the cracks

The dumb ass people have not gotten to this sign yet

Just a cactus with the sun shining on it

Some kind of tree parasite?

Morteros in the area show Indians occupied the area thousands of years ago

Indian pottery fragments found in the area

My sissy 4WD skills stopped us here from driving. The picture does not do justice to the steepness of the rocks

An interesting cactus

Classic BLM land usage items left in the area

Another wildlife guzzler we saw.

The Lindsay book describes an "Ornate stone cabin with a tin roof"..well here it is


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5 comments:

  1. 1) what's a "wildlife guzzler"? Is it a drainage thing that accidentally carries away little fuzzies?

    2) 3rd rock looks too much like a yoni to be accidental, though for the life of me, I have no clue how they carved those things...

    3) that 1st sign is a perfect justification on my misanthropy.

    4) Were those morteros outside the cave? If so, they had a better kitchen than *I* do. It's GORGEOUS, and looks pretty spacious...

    5) Love the flat cauliflower rock. Once again, I wish I knew a geologist who could explain...

    6)SO jealous of the pottery shards -- were they around the cave?

    7) That second cholla looks like a balloon animal...with a bunch of extra parts. I adore the way a setting sun hits those guys -- I was uber frustrated that I was never able to capture it well. This one gets it:

    http://gallery.photo.net/photo/389192-lg.jpg

    8) what are the BLM shards? Just crap from them building signs and such?

    Great pics!

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  2. Hey Cayenne! Thanks for the great questions!

    1) In my own words, a Wildlife Guzzler is a man made water collection and storage system designed to provide wildlife animals with a year round water source. The BLM has built many of these in remote areas of the backcountry.

    2) I question it only because it was in a very odd visual place. It was only visible from a high vantage point on some boulders we had to climb up on. Most of the yoni carvings I have seen elsewhere are easily visble from normal ground level areas.

    3) Since BLM areas allow firearms this is the classic result, shooting the "No Shooting Allowed" signs and anything else in view. Misanthropy is a mild descripition of my feeleings when I see this kind of thing....sigh...dumb ass people.

    4) Stop..your killing me again..hahaha..besides, do you really think they would grind food *inside* the house??

    5) That rock was HUGE! I tried to photograph the whole rock but it just didn't come out right in the picture so a small portion is the best view.

    6) Pottery shards can be found in a lot of areas of the desert, I just don't think most people know what they are looking for. No, they were not near the cave.

    7) Your right, it does look like one of those kooky balloon animals, maybe that is why it caught my eye. Nice picture you referenced, I like it!

    8) They are bullets! Some have hit something and mushroomed and some have just hit dirt and not deformed at all. Almost every BLM area is riddled with bullets from **dumb ass people**. Don't read this the wrong way, guns don't equal dumb ass people, just some people are dumb ass and own guns.

    Thanks!

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  3. Sweet -- thanks!

    Maybe that was the Queen Yoni. :]

    Interesting on the wildlife guzzlers -- it's a nice gesture. It wouldn't kill 'em to toss some rocks into the concrete to help them be a little prettier (sorta like the walls of the stone cabin -- nice desert camouflage).

    Most disturbing about those dumb ass people is that the same ones who delight in shooting the signs are of the very same that would take joy in destroying any pictographs and/or petroglyphs they might run across. Small minded idiots hungry for some sliver of a sense of power. Gag.

    Thanks again for the info!

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  4. And just 'cause you left it out... it was about 40° at the warmest that day.. and windy. And we "recovered" another mylar balloon. Daren says we'll find one every time! So far, he's right!

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  5. Looks like a cool area to explore.
    Your pictures are great.
    Makes me want to hike that area

    Bob

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