Whale Peak via Bisnaga Wash - ABDSP

I finally got around to hiking up to Whale Peak. I planned a route up from Bisnaga Wash almost one year ago and never went. I would not recommend this route for anyone who just wants to summit Whale Peak, I would suggest one of the more popular routes up from Blair Valley or Pinyon Mtn. It took me most of the day to hike it but in the end it was worth it.

See all the pictures from the trip here http://www.darensefcik.com/Photography/Anza-Borrego-Desert-State-Park/Whale-Peak-10-07-2011/19490750_TmpnG6

Here is a Google Earth image of the actual route recorded by my GPS


This is the route going up just after getting out of the wash. Whale Peak is way off in the distance about 5 miles away


This was a steep wash ravine Google Earth didn't show me


Yours truly


Started finding pottery going up


More "trail"


Got to walk in a small sandy wash for awhile, lots of animal tracks


There was some more pottery and a small milling feature along the way



It was at this steep climb near the top I almost convinced myself to turn around and go back to my truck where there was cold beer waiting


I pressed on and found this cool old Juniper tree at the top of the ridge line


I still had two valleys like this to cross to get to the top of Whale Peak, that would still be another 1.5 miles or so.


At the top of Whale Peak looking west towards the Laguna Mountains and Vallecito Valley below


On the east side of the peak you can see the Salton Sea


There is a rock shelter that guards the hikers register. There were many great places to camp overnight at the top.


The register. This is a popular peak with entries every few days.

Wildlife of the week

Nothing fancy here, just some bird photos at Dog Beach in Ocean Beach California. I usually don't take my camera with me to the beach but decided to this last weekend. It is hard to get close up photos of birds when your dog is running around everywhere.

Snowy Egret


Our always beloved crow, he has some kind of fruit pit. He was very protective of this seed/pit


This little bird made lovely singing bird song sounds, I am not sure what kind of bird it is

Water Drops

Following up with my original Water Drop post I remembered I had some more water drop photos I could post.

Here are some water drop photos with regular and Easter themed M&M's. I created the stage for them by placing M&M's in a wine glass and then used a piece of glass from a picture frame on top of the wine glass. I then used the end of fork to place small drops of water on the picture frame glass. They needed to be really small and getting the lighting just right was time consuming. I achieved perfect lighting by moving the glass around in front of my sliding glass door.

Here are some interesting drops on leaves after an early morning rain. I liked them because of the refraction of the landscape you see in them.