Vallecito Valley 3 Day Backpack Trip

After Thanksgiving Gary and I headed out to the Vallecito Valley area for a 3 day backpack trip. Original plans that included hiking over to Canebrake changed to just poking around the Sawtooth mountain range for 3 days. That meant my truck would sit all alone waiting for nobody over in Indian Valley. After deciding on a place to leave Gary's vehicle we started out cross country thru a mixed boundary of ABDSP, BLM, County and private lands. We had no set goals other than to hike, explore and camp out for 3 days, pretty simple. We each started with about 9 liters of water thinking we would find some more at a piped spring I knew about but if it was dry we wanted enough to get us back. Temps for the trip were low 80's during the day and low 50's at night with very little wind and an almost full moon each night, pretty darn good weather I think.

Not to far into our trip we ran across an old windmill setup


I guess the KendallVille name goes back a long time in America's Windmill history


Looks like the windmill pumped water over to a trough that had a sophisticated float shutoff valve assembly



This must be the towering metal base for the water collection


Here is a great view into Storm Canyon


Vallecito Valley has many water troughs left over from early cattle ranching days and we found several of them. Here is another dried up trough out in the middle of nowhere


Unfortunately Mylar Balloons do not seem to escape our remote wilderness trek


The Sawtooth Mountains at sunset


Are you a Yoni "believer"?


Gary and I had some plans but as we headed out they seemed to slowly fade and we ended up just drifting thru the valley and exploring the landscape and boulder outcrops as the sun slowly began to set. The moon was shining bright enough to allow us to hike during the early evening without lights so we took advantage of that moonlight and hiked several more miles under the moonlit desert skies until we reached a good place to camp near the base of the Laguna Mountains.

Here is our moonlit camp on day 1, this is a long 5 minute exposure. Beautiful weather and campsite


Early morning sunrise with Monument Peak towering in the background


Even though we both brought 9 liters of water for the trip we had counted on getting some water from an old piped spring out in the valley. I knew the last time I was there it had plenty of water and we were counting on it being wet this trip also. Turns out the pipe had a hole in it a few hundred yards up from the collection trough. The spigot was only dripping when we got there and the trough was only inches full, just enough to support pond scum life


Gary found the hole and with some old left over repair debris we found and an old beer can we managed to get it back flowing at full capacity.

Here is the hole pre-repair


Here is the hole post-repair


Now the water flow is good and we get a few liters of water to start the day with


Damn, boulders everywhere!!


Here is an old water trough that has dried up


And the valley seems to have miles of water lines that have dried up and broken over the years but have largely been forgotten by now


The tranquil day is coming to an end and we look for a place to camp out for the second night of our trip. The middle of the valley is as good of a place as any and Gary schools me on how to "rough" up a soft spot for the night. With the moon still bright we took a short hike up a small finger towards Moument Peak looking for a spring we did not find but it was like the first night, a very restful and enjoyable evening out in the wilderness. The coyotes serenaded us in the early morning hours.

On our 3rd day out we stumbled across what we called "chair cave", gotta love those old timers....


We decided a shade break was needed


Well since we were exploring we found a few cultural artifacts and some rock art along the way

A small arrowhead point


A metate fragment


Pictogaphs






And some historic artifacts, maybe this is a hand forged knife blade??


A Good 'ol boy horseshoe with square nails and all



Oh wait, almost forgot the most significant artifact


I guess even Dora Explores the Desert

Total Mylar Balloon Count - 11 (Not all pictured)

Eagle Fire / Vallecito Hike - ABDSP

************ Update Aug 1st 2011 ************
According to CAL FIRE the Eagle fire is now 100% contained
*********************************************

The Eagle fire has burned more than 14,000 acres and spread into the Anza Borrego Desert State park canyons. On a recent trip to the desert I photographed some of the helicopters making water drops on the blaze. They were filling up from the Borrego Community water ponds. It was very interesting to watch, they were flying circles around Indinan Head Peak dropping water onto the fires in Palm Canyon and Henderson Canyon. They were moving very quickly, these guys were really good and busting some serious ass fighting the fire. It was amazing to watch.

You can see more photos of the helicopters in action and a few videos here

This is one video of a helicopter coming in to pickup water




This is the SDG&E SPL Tower helicopter helping out



Two helicopters fill up at once, looked a little sketchy to me but I guess they know what they are doing


Sky Art sculptures near Henderson Canyon, you can see the smoke from the blaze in the background and the many trucks from the fire crew on stand by


On a hike out thru a very remote area of Vallecito I found a few pictographs, pottery sherds, morteros and a Bobcat watching me from up in a small cave. I also had a couple of coyotes dart out away from me while boulder hopping in a few areas. As usual for that area I saw a lot of large mountain lion scat.

You can see all of the pictures from Vallecito here

This Bobcat was watching me while I ate some lunch, this was in a very remote area of Vallecito


This was a very interesting rock, it has the looks of possible carvings but is most likely a natural formation


I saw several large scats that looked like Century Plant pods and seeds


These were pretty cool looking morteros


I was not sure what to make of these prints. I followed them for about a mile thru a wash until I had to turn onto the road. They were large, roundish and deep. Almost like a basketball was thrown down into the sand, my sunglasses are next to them for size comparison and you can see my foot prints to the left, very faint so you know these were made by something heavy footed.


A nice size mountain lion scat


I found some interesting pictographs. Here are a couple with the originals and then with a Dstretch enhancement

Earthquake / Vallecito Valley - Part 3 - ABDSP

Here is Part 3 of my trip report.

Part 1 and 2 can be read here: Part 1 Part 2

Anza Borrego is rich with stories of people trying to navigate it's Badlands and also of people trying to make it a place to call home. One of these stories is of Olin Bailey. He built his cabin in 1906 and it had many structural features that were not found in homes built of the same era. I had a hard time finding much history about the cabin, the newly built interpretive signs seem to have quite a bit though.




The actual cabin had a protective roof structure built over it in 2007 to preserve what remains. You can read more about this effort here Bailey Cabin protective structure, Borrego – 2007


Looking at the east facing side of the cabin


The front door(?)


Continuing my explorations this day in 105 degree heat proved too much for my trusty two-wheeled companion. I ended up with 2 flat tires and a broken rear sprocket that left me stranded 3 miles from the S2 highway. I was prepared of course, I always set out with at least 2 gallons of water and food.


She was shining with pride at 9pm under an almost full moon the night before


Some really cool things grow out in the desert, like this Coyote Melon


I found some more wreckage debris from the F8-J about an hour's hike away from the engine I found in trip report 1



Some interesting milling sites and rock shelters



Also some really big pottery sherds in the area


On my way home I decided to stop and check out the alien spaceships nearby


One of the aliens offered to take me for a ride...that was interesting...


The whole alien family had to watch the gringo go by


They wanted to take me thru the Worm Hole but I declined..I was late for supper