McCain Valley & The In-Ko-Pah Mountains Misc Summer Trips With Fujia Velvia 50

Tom and I have been going out to McCain Valley the last couple of months for some backpack and car camping trips just exploring around the immense boulder strewn In-Ko-Pah mountain range. Some of our explorations were in ABDSP and some crossed into BLM territories. The weather has been pretty hot this summer and the 4,000+' higher altitude of McCain Valley was tolerable for many weekends. Wildlife was scarce, Pepperwood Spring was dry and the only other people we saw on any of our hikes were OHV users driving around where they shouldn't have been.

I lugged along my Olympus 35mm camera with a roll of Fuji Velvia and struggled to take 29 pictures before I finally decided to roll it up and get it developed..wasting 7 precious frames of Velvia goodness. There really is something magical about Velvia film, it is amazing sharp, colors are warm and beautiful and holding the film in your hands and looking at it thru a loupe reminds me of when I was kid and had all the Disney slides for my View Master....pure joy....

All of the photos on this post are Fuji Velvia 50 35mm from my Olympus OM-1n. Processed at NCP in Carlsbad CA and scanned by me with an Epson V700 scanner. I did no touch up to them other than a small zap of USM.

Here is a really nice early morning view of Canebrake Wash from the Pepperwood trail. Red Top is just out of site on the right side. I have crossed over that pass on the left several times on trips to Potrero


One place I have been trying to find for several years was Thunder Canyon and Tom and I found it...barely. It is very difficult to find and we almost gave up but decided to look down "one more" crack in the boulders. Here is a view of the boulder pile where we found it, even standing right next to it you will miss it if you are not trying to find it on purpose


There is an old coral nearby but has no significant clues to it's location


We did find some nice pictographs and mortars nearby. Here are before and after pictures of DStretch in action with Film photographs. These were scanned on an Epson v700 and Vuescan Pro. I think they are very nice and in some ways better than the digital versions. Large format film I am sure would really make the quality of DStretch images better than any digital cameras






Pepperwood Trail is a regular corridor for undocumented travelers and they will leave behind all kinds clothing discards and in particular shoe covers that keep their tracks from being seen


Some people may not know about it but there will be a wind turbine farm soon built in McCain Valley and turbines will be along one of the ridges that separate McCain Valley and Thing Valley so Tom and I climbed up the ridge to have a look around and the views were amazing. It will be such a shame to put big turbines there.

Here is the ridge we climbed up, my camera jammed on the shot so it doubled up the exposure but you get the idea


Up on the ridge line where the turbines will be placed you can see all of the Carrizo Mtn range, Ocotillo, Canebrake, Fish Creek, just about anywhere east


Tom and I surmised this was some kind of wind data collection pole since it had several spinning things at the top and what looked like CDMA communications strapped on the pole


Tom looking out over Thing Valley and towards the Laguna Observatory


Misc Flora


And Tom near Lowenbrau Pinnacle


UPDATED with a few more photos that I developed from another roll

These old state park signs were originally mounted to redwood posts (sombrero peak background)


This is the headwaters of Bow Willow Creek where it meets the Thing Valley ridge line (home of the new Tule wind turbines).I thought it was an interesting picture, the shadows were just right to bring out the long draw of the dried up creek bottom. Note the lone Cottonwood in the middle of the creek (yellow leaves)


Here is the Cowboy Crapper...I think I prefer the bushes....


In the midst of arguably the driest season known to us there is still some water in the middle of the high desert


Tom enjoying great views from the In-Ko-Pah mountains, Carrizo Gorge and the Ocotillo Wind Farm below.


Panorama of the whole desert floor from Sombrero Peak to Ocotillo (yes, you can stitch together film shots!)



Total Balloons for these trips - 20+ stopped counting




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Indian Valley / In-Koh-Pah Mountains Backpack

A 2 day backpack trip out into Indian Valley and the In-Koh-Pah mountains area with a couple friends. Great weather, saw some wildlife and enjoyed the great outdoors, also tried out my new Fujifilm XE-1 camera. My back is still messed up but I have acquired mostly all ultra light weight stuff now and can keep my pack down to about 20lbs with 2 liters of water, food and some booze....that is about my limit for now. I also carried another 2 liters of water in my hands, so 4 liters total, 2 each day.

Tom and Joel putting on their more than 20lbs backpacks...I know how that goes....


We came across an old cow carcass and Tom was quick to start pointing out how my back was messed up using the cow spine as a visual aid. Apparently this cow had a pretty screwed up back also



Gorgeous views of the desert floor and the surrounding Laguna Mountains. Clouds and light drizzle were moving in.


This was an old runway/airstrip back in the day, you can see the old winsock pipe and harness still standing


A panorama of Indian Valley


Lots of bony scat along the way and many morteros full of scat, what did the native americans do to keep animals from crapping in their grinding holes?



With the drizzle and dark clouds in the sky I picked out a nice boulder overhang to setup for the night


Tom had a real nice tent setup


Joel had a visitor snooping around his tent and backpack...Foxy Loxy had no fear....




Found a few pictos along the way



Whale Peak


Welcome to Ocotillo California



Total Mylar Balloons This Trip - 6

Hunting in the In-Ko-Pah Mountains

Went on a 2 day backpacking trip to hunt for pictographs in the In-Ko-Pah mountains. The night sky was perfect for star gazing, I could easily see the Andromeda Galaxy with my binoculars and shooting stars were streaking across the sky all night, especially from 3am-5am when I easily saw 3-4 per minute it seemed like.

Jupiter may be one of the outer bright streaks, not sure
(Olympus OM-2s, 28mm, f/5.6, Lomography 100 ISO color film)


The hunt was good, we found some new pictographs on a panel I had visited before but did not see them because they are so faint. I still did not see them while photographing the "blank" boulder face but DStretch made them pop out once I got home and processed the photos.

Here is a 5 image stitched photo of what looked like a blank boulder face


Here is the DStretched version...it revealed two different pictographs


Lets look at a couple of the individual images used to stitch everything together, they will show more detail.

Here is the top section before/after



Here is the bottom section before/after



Just amazing...you simply cannot see these pictographs staring at the boulder!

Here is another panel that I did not see a pictograph on, mostly because I was focused on the obvious one below it. These photos reveal another sun burst above and to the right of the obvious one.



If you have Manfred Knaak's book The Forgotten Artist: Indians of Anza-Borrego and Their Rock Art and look on page 73 you will see a panel of rock art that looks like it is in pretty good condition. He credits the Museum of Man for the photo so chances are it is from the 30's or 40's, possibly from Malcolm Rodgers.

I used an old 1937 camera and old expired color film to photograph it as best I could to match, here are the results



The photo in Knaak's book looks awfully good compared to what I photographed last weekend, I wonder if the deterioration over the years is genuine or if the older photo in the book was modified somehow to represent more of what the photographer believed he/she saw.

Here are a few more before/after photos of the same panel













Total Mylar Balloons this trip - 4 (sorry, no photo)