Page updated: 05/30/2004 11:09 PM
Anza Borrego Exploration
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Some scenic trail riding out near
Blair Valley Campgrounds. |
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Another great weekend. We drove to Blair Valley Campground Friday, had the place to ourselves.  Just us! We took a drive up to Agua Caliente Friday afternoon, after setting up camp. It's OK, a little expensive, and "elderly" looking. The hot springs that is enclosed in a glass partition looks as if it would be just the ticket in the winter time, after a day on the trail. There is also an outdoor hot springs. Neither is large enough to really swim in, community bath tubs for the most part, heheh. NO PETS allowed. Also stopped at the Vallecitos Stage Station campground. You have to pay here as well. Nothing there to really make it worth paying IMO. Blair Valley is free, plenty of room for large groups. It was almost spooky it is so quiet. House battery on the RV sucks, needs to be replaced...really needed a charge Friday night. It was so peaceful out there I just couldn't bring myself to start the generator, so we did without. Saturday, Danny (YJBREAKER), Bob (Robert-R) and Bill (YJBill) showed up. Bill left his rig at home, rode JAFO with Bob. Danny said he saw Blair in Ramona, thought he might be coming out. Sure enough, the short bus came rolling into camp with Blair (Blair Will) and Seth (sethmark), and Seth's dogs Indiana and Buddy!  Ready to go. We decided to head down to Canyon Sin Nombre via the highway, then go up Fish Creek to the Pinyon Mountain Trail. Up Heart Attack Hill and back to camp. As soon as we hit the highway, I developed a bad case of death wobble. Aired the tires (TSL bias ply's) up to 30 psi, they were at 20 psi. That made it a little better, but I still didn't trust it. 25 miles of highway to go, ughh. Fortunately S-2 is not heavily traveled. We made the drive at about 50 mph. Anyway, we took Canyon Sin Nombre to Arroyo Tapiado to get to the mud caves. They weren't as spooky as I thought they would be. Quite amazing actually. We went in the smaller one, where you walk through a narrow crack in the hill. It ends at a large cavern with a hole in the top.  Blair and Danny in the crevasse that leads to the cavern. The larger "cave" is actually just a passage through a very narrow wash IMO. We hiked up it a half mile or so.  Machelle, in the wash from the "big cave". Then we headed up to Sandstone Canyon. This is a box canyon with no outlet. The terrain gets rougher towards the top.  Entrance of sandstone Canyon. When we got back to Fish Creek trail, Blair and Seth decided to head out via Split Mountain Trail. The rest of us headed up to Heart Attack Hill via the Pinyon Mountain Trail. Bob was first in line, got half way up Heart Attack Hill when his rear end started banging, bucking, and binding. We got Bob stopped and took a look at the situation. There is a rock that makes a convenient winch anchor at the top, so we went that route, and got Bob safely to the top. I went next, had the winch ready, just in case, walked right up it.  Heart Attack Hill, most maps say this is one way...downhill. I let this obstacle get into my head and was convinced I was going to have problems on it. Made my day when I went right up. It's not that difficult, just a head game. Danny came up last, he's open in the front, so went to the wire almost immediately. Danny has a Ramsey 8000 lb winch. Not sure what model...line speed is INCREDIBLY SLOW. I thought my Warn 10k was slow, it's a race horse compared to the Ramsey. Slow line speed made the climb a PITA. Every time Danny got over an obstacle he had to stop and let the winch catch up. Line speed is important people. Take a look at the line speed on some of those cheap winches. If you don't have crawler gears, you're going to outrun your cable. Just something to think about. Once at the top, we decided to see what was up with Bob's rear end. We got some plastic bags with dirt in them set up to catch the gear oil, and popped the cover...YIKES...CHUNKS. Gears were destroyed on Bob's D44. He said that this was the second time he'd had a set of gears grenade. We tried leaving the rear driveshaft in, but the rear end kept binding the entire drive train. We finally pulled it out after I pulled Bob up through the "Squeeze". Things were much better with the rear driveshaft out, and Bob drove it the 2 miles down the highway, back to our camp with no problems after reaching the trails end. After some talking about it, we finally decided the best thing to do was to have Danny take Bob and Bill home. They would return in the morning with a trailer to collect the Jeep...and that's what we did. Machelle and I had a great time. Did a little more real wheeling than I thought we would, which is always a good thing. As always, good to see those that made it out. Hope to see more of you next time. We definitely plan to return and do some more of the scenic trails around the Blair Valley Campground.  End of another great day with good buddies, and a good trail. Bob (PS, take a metal container if you want a campfire) View ALL photos taken on this trip
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