With a campsite already booked for a family weekend at Agua Caliente, it seemed like a good late season opportunity to sneak away for a solo hike Saturday to the Carrizo Badlands. Carol, Fredrik, and I had been attempting to coordinate a mud cave exploration and survey trip back to the Coyote Mountains and Carrizo Badlands but could not get our schedules to overlap completely. Fredrik ended up doing a solo exploration trip in the central part of the badlands that turned up a few small caves and lots of too tight features, then Fredrik and Carol returned to survey a 200ft cave in that area. Based on my aerial photo interpretation I thought the best potential for caves was in the more remote and inaccessible west side of the badlands and plotted out a potential loop in and out of the area passing by about a dozen intriguing features to check out. So far the 400 ft-long Jenga Cave was the longest we have found in the region but I was certainly expecting the badlands had more extensive caves to offer.
I arrived at Agua a bit after dark with sufficient time for a soak in the indoor hot pool before it closed for the night which was a nice way to unwind. Speaking of which, it was a windy night. I was able to swap cars with Heather for the day which would get me to the trailhead. Anticipating a warm day, I got an early 6:30am-ish start from the campground and drove through expanses of blooming ocotillos, the border patrol station, and then the dirt road to the Domelands trailhead. I tried to pack light but carried a heavy 3L of water which I had no issue burning through. I followed the familiar access route up to Andrade Wash, then headed opposite most visitors to the area, west following an old mining road. This provided decent travel as it climbed upward to the ridge of the mountains in and out of washes. After a while the road disappeared and I continued following ridges. At the crest of the range I had my first panoramic views of the badlands to the north- vast, intricate, and a fair distance below me.
My hiking poles certainly came in handy as I descended the steep metamorphic ridge down to the alluvial fan surface below. This was steep but also a direct and efficient way of accessing this seldom visited portion of the badlands. Once on the hanging alluvial fan remnant I almost immediately had my first sinking stream to go check out. This turned out to be a 200ft through trip with some crawling and an upper level. I rated it "one star" but considered it a good sign of things to come. I then worked my way across some broken terrain of oyster beds, washes, and fan surface to gain the mudstone which I would remain on for much of the day. I followed a ridge to a place I could carefully drop down to a submergence entrance, noting how surprisingly fluffy the mud crust was underfoot, more like powder snow than anything. I dropped my pack and crawled in this first badland entrance- 25ft of knee crawling gave way to 70ft of nice walking passage but then I turned around after another 25ft of squeezing, getting the gist of it. Once out I climbed down into the next entrance downstream which had several surprises. This was clearly the same cave but had extensive upper levels that included some very nice fibrous gypsum deposits. I crawled my way downstream when I was suddenly jolted to alertness by a very angry (or equally surprised) rattlesnake about 15ft in front of me! Adrenaline kicking in I fairly quickly retraced my steps back out leaving the rest of the cave for the rattler. It was certainly the most exciting event of the day.
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| An unexpected troglobite with a rattle! |
Continuing down the canyon I passed through three separate through trip caves each about 150 ft long and then entered a neighboring wash. The desolation of the badlands was impressive and it was not unusual to have a view completely devoid of any signs of life. I dropped my pack and continued up to explore two very nice through trips in an area I ended up calling Chaos Canyon as giant boulders of a harder fossil layer were laid at bizarre angles that the caves had to work their way around or under. Overall these two caves were spacious walking passages with tall ceilings and some nice skylights, well worth surveying (frontispiece).
Though the photos are lacking, I was still less than a third of the way through checking leads on my loop. The day heated up considerably and it was always a harsh blow every time I exited the cool air of a mud cave into the furnace blast of the desert. I spent quite a bit of time exploring a two branch cave that I think must be the longest one I saw and that I think would survey out to over a 1000ft in length, an obvious target to return to. I managed to barely climb up an angle of repose slope to cross over into the next wash network to the east to continue exploring. Here I found a unique cave with two different dryfalls and another very long, sinuous cave that was over 500ft in length. I was getting quite spoiled to the point that I walked right past easy knee crawling entrances to save them as leads for another time. On my way back I passed by one very mysterious pit that I still do not quite understand where it drains to. Several more steep mud slope crossings finally saw me gaining the older dissected alluvial surfaces just west of Andrade Canyon which provided excellent travel and even surprisingly had an intermittently cairned trail. This trail effectively bypassed the dryfall climb in Andrade Canyon I did not particularly want to attempt alone. Once into the canyon it was an easy, if still sweaty, stroll back to the car and then drive back to the campsite. Not counting mud cave exploration, I covered a 8.5 mile loop having actively hiked around 5 hours. I enjoyed the solo wilderness jaunt and it was a successful trip in having identified at least 5 mud caves that meet my high bar for surveying. Even better I returned in time to enjoy the pool and then later in the evening the indoor hot pool. The air temperatures were sufficient to make me think that the mud cave season is over here but with good targets to return to next season.
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