For better or worse I have come to think that my definition of "American wilderness" is defined by the number of mylar balloons seen per distance walked without seeing other trash. My theory is that tens of thousands of these balloons are scattered to the winds per year to reside across the continent. They are shiny, clean lightweight objects that arguably make the most appealing trash to pick up (other than say money). So by my reasoning Coyote Mountains scored very high on the wilderness scale with eleven balloons recovered in a day and a half of hiking with zero people or other trash seen.
This wilderness area a mere 15 miles from the Mexico border was a wonderful surprise. I had only first heard of it two months prior when driving past a dirt road turn-off with a sign with the intriguing name "Domelands Trailhead." Google searching revealed it seemed to be a relatively unknown gem with the draw being wilderness hiking to some rounded sandstone outcrops with wind caves and abundant shallow marine fossils. Google Earthing revealed some promising slot canyons slicing through the sandstone and conglomerate and blind drainages in the mud badlands that signaled mud cave systems, both of which may not have previously been explored. I prioritized and plotted out a route and backup routes and we set a plan over the holiday break. Ropes and lightweight canyon gear were brought just in case. We carried 4L of water each (just about right) but still had packs weighing a manageable 23-29lbs. Even in the dead of winter in the low desert we had a comfortable high of 70F and a low of about 50F, just about perfect for this trip.
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| Descending Andrade Canyon |
We got an early start from Riverside, driving through the Temecula/Palomar backroads. By the time we arrived at the end of the sandy dirt road trailhead and shouldered our packs it was 8:30a. We hiked up the trail through badlands for the first mile, a dirt road degraded to single track. Heather noted the construction zone like appearance of the landscape in this area and I had to agree. We crossed over the subtlest saddle and the drainages then all filtered northward into the major Andrade Canyon we planned to descend to the northern badlands. We turned off the trail and walked down the wash which was thankfully hard packed and easy travel. Granitic and gneissic bedrock rose all around in towering crumbly walls. We had several minor downclimbs to contend with and some interesting tourmaline-garnet pegmatites along the way. In the deepest part of the bedrock gorge we had an intimidating 15ft downclimb to surmount. Heather harnessed up and I meat anchored a rappel for her, then lowered the two packs. It turns out it was an easy downclimb (which I did). One of those ones you would not think twice about ascending but looking over the edge from above seems like a debatable choice. Once down the footprints disappeared. More deep gorge and some impressive rock falls, then the canyon opened for a mud badland interlude. The canyon then narrowed up a second more dramatic time with vertical-walled conglomerate cliffs and a carved bedrock floor. Golden light bounced off these cliffs.
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| Near the bottom of Andrade Canyon (and below) |
After some more minor downclimbs the walls ended abruptly and spilled us out into the bright badlands. Hmm these badlands were considerably steeper than I imagined from the aerial photos and we would not be climbing up the walls wherever we wanted! We turned up a badland tributary past debris cones of popcorn mud; it certainly seemed like the area had not seen rain in years.
We went with plan B of ascending the adjacent conglomerate canyon to ultimately cross over to the first slot canyons of interest. Near the bottom was a very impressive natural bridge formed when an enormous block of the canyon wall slipped to chockstone itself. Beyond was more rockfall to navigate. We had a snack on a nice flat rock while I scouted ahead how we were going to scramble up out of the canyon.
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| Rockfall natural bridge |
I found a easy sheep trail exit to the canyon which quickly climbed to the canyon's rim with great views of the expanse of badlands. We crossed over ocotillo-ed alluvial surfaces to the tilted shield of slickrock with the slots carved in. Portions of the slickrock were completely coated in well-preserved scallop and sand dollar fossils. We walked down the slickrock, zigzagging over a shallow, open slot with many arches, potholes, and flutes that suggested the neighboring slot could be great. We dropped our overnight packs at the base of the slickrock and took only water and canyon gear to loop out way around and through the region's slots.
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| California slickrock! |
I decided to try to approach the deepest canyon from the bottom thinking that many features would probably be easier to upclimb than downclimb and the nature of the canyons so far suggested rappels would be rare. This turned out to be a wise decision. This slot ("Sand Dollar Slot") was deep, narrow and sinuous with many short climbs requiring fossils as handholds. It was every bit as scenic as I hoped but footprints revealed that others had been through recently. We ascended without incident, the slot over all too soon. We climbed out after the lower slot to scout the scour to the east ("Balcony Slot"), we could see the whole thing and decided it was not worth the effort of rigging a rappel to go through it. We then returned to go up the upper Sand Dollar Slot. The upper slot was not quite as sinuous or deep but had some more interesting downclimbs. We made it through without issue and looped back down the slickrock to check out the shallow work-in-progress slot to the west. This one had nice sculpted features but was kind of silly considering you could climb out at pretty much every point.
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| "Sand Dollar Slot" (and below) |
We were off to a good start with Sand Dollar Slot being a nice scenic find. We dropped the ropes and harnesses and set off for a 2 mile loop around the badlands. We had a false start after climbing up the nearest hill and decided dropping down the other side was pretty dicey, so retraced and then walked down the wash.
Down the wash we soon arrived at a hard shell hash horizon in the mudstone badlands that formed a 15ft overhanging dryfalls. We had to bypass this by traversing the crumbly slopes to its right. Below the wash plunged into a spacious 300 ft long walk-through mud cave. The lower entrance was a precarious jumble of stacked rocks that prompted me to call the cave Jenga Cave.
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| "Jenga Cave" |
Exiting and continuing down the wash I soon realized that most of the tributary mud caves had blocked lower entrances from rock (mud) fall. It seemed like the area needed a good solid rain to clear everything out! We climbed into one cave for about 50ft until it turned into a dusty belly crawl. One further cave had some nice walking sections and great golden light illuminated from skylights (frontispiece). By this point most of the way around the loop I wanted to do, we decided to take one more stab at the steep slope that looked heinous from above, hoping that climbing up it would be less horrible. Cautiously we rose hands and feet, step-by-step up the steep narrow ridge that dropped precipitously on both sides. After a couple minutes of mostly quiet concentration we were up!
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| "Golden Skylight Cave" |
We stopped to snack and drink then reshouldered our packs to traverse across to the next slot canyon area. We quickly vetoed my original plan of crossing through the badlands given our experience, and instead opted for a slow traverse across rocky slopes, up and down ravines at the edge of the conglomerate-bedrock contact. It took us a good long while to go one mile, particularly with tired and shaky feet. We found an excellent sandy campspot at the end of a short slot with nice fossils and set in for a very comfortable night (nothing like the 14F night I had recently doing fieldwork!). I was satsified at the ground we were able to cover. Our water stores were looking a little lower than we both hoped, but things were certainly not desperate.
Breakfast and camp tear-down were efficient and we moved on to the second slot canyon area. These canyons seemed more vertical (with rappels more likely) so we dropped packs at the top and sorted canyon gear. We started down the second from the west of four canyons ("Crack Fork"), which seemed to be the longest (from west to east I ended up nicknaming these Arch Fork, Crack Fork, Waterfall Fork, and Rockfall Fork). Some very nice sculpted narrows and downclimbs brought us to a very convincing 20ft rappel into a dark slot. Exciting! I rigged the drop off a crumbly rock horn and then dropped down first. I confirmed that there was a possible escape at the end of the slot and so had Heather rappel down after.
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| "Crack Fork Slot" (and below) |
Below the confluence with the Arch Fork was another overhanging rappel which would could easily bypass. From the very bottom of the canyon I upclimbed to the base of this rappel, seeing everything. We then went up the Rockfall Fork from the bottom, me continuing up a tricky climb to the top of the slot. Then we went up the Waterfall Fork to the bottom of a nice fluted rappel. We hiked back up the ridge. I went over to retrieve our anchor material and then checked out the top of the Arch Fork which was surprisingly scenic with a dozen nice rock arches. Lastly we checked the top of the Waterfall Fork down to its first rappel at the top of a 25ft drop. Some neat stuff! It would have been nice to drop in and through the Waterfall Fork but we had more to see and so looped back for our packs.
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| "Waterfall Fork Slot" (and below) |
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| "Arch Fork Slot" (and below) |
In summary from west to east:
Arch Fork: Minor downclimbs, lots of arches, awkward 20ft rappel off rocks, 25ft rappel off rocks (or bypass), 9ft downclimb (probably best appreciated from the top down to the first rappel then return up)
Crack Fork: Narrows and minor downclimbs, 20ft rappel off horn, nice slot, 25ft rappel off rocks (or bypass), 9ft downclimb (middle and top sections are best)
Good approach/exit ridge: Straightforward
Waterfall Fork: Narrows and minor downclimbs, 30ft rappel with rope-eating crack off of rocks, open hallway section, 25ft rappel down fluted dryfall off boulders, minor downclimbs (most substantial canyon, potential issues with safely rigging first rappel)
Rockfall Fork: Much scrambling over boulders, 5ft downclimb, 6ft downclimb, 5ft downclimb, awkward 10ft downclimb, 5ft downclimb (least substantial but still some nice moments towards the bottom)
We then hiked up the loose steep slope gaining 300ft in elevation to top out on top of the prominent conglomerate cliff. As a bonus most of this ascent was done in the shadows, reducing sweat. Once up it would be easy trail walking the rest of the way. We carried only water to detour down the 0.5 miles to the "Domelands Slot", the one hikers regularly visit. We saw some more great fossils in this area including chunky sea biscuit sand dollars.
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| Sand Dollar |
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| Sea biscuits |
Strolling around without a pack was downright pleasant. Once again we started at the bottom of the slot and worked our way up. This Domelands Slot was certainly the deepest, darkest, and probably most fun with interesting potholes and dryfalls to climb! Tons of fossils too. From the bottom it seemed highly unlikely that there would not be rappels but as it turned out the canyon bottom largely followed the even gradient of a resistant fossil bed in the conglomerate. The slot was only 600ft long but was scenic from start to finish.
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| "Domelands Slot" (and below) |
We hiked back to our packs and then continued up the trail, making excellent time. Ten short minutes found us at a wind cave conglomerate mound that we took a break exploring.
From this ridge we made good time plotting a route down the trail, then down upper Andrade Canyon, then following faint cross country trails to regain our approach. The hike from the summit took us less than an hour. I was happy to see Heather's car not shot to pieces. We drove south this time to hit up the nearest gas station for refreshing drinks, then drove scenic Hwy 8 to El Cajon, then home.
All in all it was a great trip given the short drive, remoteness of the area, superb fossils, and stunning landscape. It is a really special area I can envision becoming more popular as it is discovered.
