We planned a quick two night escape to Guadalupe Canyon just south of the border to round out the end of the year. Somehow our last visit was ages ago in March 2019, and somehow despite the age of social ruin, the 20+ reservable campsites were more than half empty a few days before New Year's. The place is a true oasis of hundreds of California fan palms clustering around several hot spring sources that feed the hot tubs in an otherwise arid lowland desert. Each campsite has at least one private hot tub and each site is unique. Some have commanding views of the Cerro Rasco crag towering above, others are tightly nestled by palm fronds. The improvised infrastructure and network of pipes gives a Swiss Family Robinson vibe to the place. Onto this trip we planned a brief visit to the southern Salton Sea to look for burrowing owls and to see how the main geothermal area had changed since several years ago.
We drove down the east side of the Salton Sea in the early morning and then turned off near Niland to attempt to navigate the very muddy canal roads to the deadend road closest to the new Salton Sea Mud Pots. The Christmas Eve storm had clearly hammered this area and it had me wondering what access would be like to Guadalupe. Here I sent up the drone to survey the current configuration of the geothermal area, and then to fly over Mullet Island to scout future access. The cool morning temperatures meant abundant steam at the mud pots. The general size and configuration of the geothermal field was much the same as several years previous but there were new details including an intricately pockmarked field of overlapping single source upwellings in a colorful wetland.
The drone returned, we continued on backroads past Red Hill and then over to the Sonny Bono Visitor Center. We strolled in and asked the guy at the counter about where we might be able to see burrowing owls. Sure enough he pointed to a xeroxed treasure map with "x"s for known nesting sites and gave us a brief rundown on etiquette and the helpful heads up that the nests are typically marked with a long wood stake. This was just what we wanted. As we nearly went to leave the docent pushed a piece of paper from the adjacent pile onto us as well: where to find all other birds in the southern Salton Sea. The persistent analogy I cannot shake is of him being a drug dealer, starting us off on the easy drugs (cute silly burrowing owls anyone can appreciate) but trying to push us to the hard drugs and a life of squalor (generic birding). I took it not to offend. We slowly navigated roads chasing "x"s, soon getting a good sense of what the owl burrows looked like. At the first site we saw a cute owl poking out of its burrow framed by an old tire. At the second we were able to get even closer to an owl poking out of irrigation piping it was just barely small enough for. We found our vehicle to make an effective blind, allowing us to view it closely without stressing it out. We struck out at the last two sites we visited. It would have been nice to have seen some more but we were otherwise satisfied to have seen a couple.
After the owls, we had a final gas-up and crossed the border at Calexico into the slightly chaotic streets of Mexicali. Slowly we progressed through many many stop signs and lights to eventually reach the main highway heading west. Even as we crossed the Sierra Cucapahs outside of town I was still undecided on which route to take into Guadalupe Canyon. I have only ever taken the free-for-all salt flats route in, which is typically faster but given the recent rain it had me worried for deep caking mud patches and a tractionless surface beneath a thin dry crust. I opted to try the "official" graded road closer to the mountains instead, despite its reputation for potholes, washouts, and washboards. Happily this road seemed to have been fairly recently graded and I was pleasantly surprised by its quality. It took us 1hr20min to reach Guadalupe Canyon- we definitely made the right choice. There was a new wash crossing at the mouth of the canyon with a wide swath of light-colored boulders from a storm several years ago (Hurricane Kay?). This storm was easily the biggest impact this canyon has seen in recorded history with a 150ft wide path of destruction wiping out hundreds of palms trees along the creek bed, leaving bedrock and deeply scoured pools in its place. I felt like the remix was a net positive thanks to all the newly deepen waterfall plunge pools along the length of the canyon. I was delighted to see that everything remained in its semi-primitive state from several years ago apart from a couple new signs. This was my third time staying at the hot springs, always on the north side of the creek, but the first time staying past the gate.
We honked our horn as instructed and were soon met by friendly caretaker Fernando who led us to our site, La Cueva (frontispiece), and gave us the one minute tour. This was easily one of the smallest sites but might be my favorite of the 20+ camping spots for its privacy and beauty. A few footsteps through palm trees and across a hot water rivulet led to a nice concrete slab for a tent with palms overhanging, a few more steps around rocks led to a small picnic table with palapa roof and balcony-like views over the palms stretching down the slope, a few rock steps to a second concrete slab with fence that I found to be nearly perfect for a hammock and lounging, and then finally through a narrow gap between two palms was our own private hot tub with a large boulder cantilevered over half of the pool to form a grotto (hence "La Cueva") and the dam side forming a ten foot cliff nestled in the palm oasis. It was spotlessly clean with built-in rock seat and a simple quarter-turn valve that allowed us to control the temperatures for the full gamut from too hot to too cold.
After setting up camp I talked Heather into a short 0.3 mile hike up to the first waterfall. This was completely different than last time with two deeply scoured swimming pools where formerly you could walk to the base of the falls in ankle depth. She chilled at the falls for an hour while I made a quick 600ft vertical scramble to a ridgeline vantage where I could send my drone far upcanyon to scout a potential hike or canyoning trip for the following day. I was impressed at just how much the canyon was reamed out by the flood with scour marks visible perhaps 50ft up the walls of the canyon in places. In minutes I made it up about 1.5 miles to the final falls, a particularly picturesque bottomless pool in an inescapable gorge.
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| Cerro Rasco towering above all |
As sunset light began to kick in I worked my way back down to Heather and we returned to settle into our campsite. Quesadillas and margaritas led into many hours of perfect soaking. Heather was feeling a little sick, otherwise no complaints at all. We both slept exceptionally well on our cozy air mattress bed while moonlight cast palm frond shadows on the tent.
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| Cascada Uno |
I got up early enough for a peaceful sunrise soak in the hot tub, then breakfast, more soaking and a nap led me to a 10am solo departure for a hike up canyon. "Just in case" I carried 200ft of rope, neoprene, and vertical gear. I passed one group hiking just past Cascada Uno, then had the whole rest of the canyon to myself. Overagressive spray-painted white arrows on boulders led the way past the first falls and then gave way to spray-painted red dot chickenpox. I soon reached the terminal pool of Cascada Dos, one of the most beautiful in the whole canyon, deep with a sandy bottom perfect for swimming.
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| Cascada Dos pool |
Onward I continued in and out of the shade of the canyon, passing several more pools, small falls, and tidy palm groves. A room-sized boulder balanced on outcrop was exactly where I remembered it, with nice multi-colored pictographs adorning its underside (happily no graffiti seen).
The 500ft gorge section below the Pool of the Virgin (Cascada Quatro) was even better than I remembered with nice light filtering through palm trees at the bottom, then a couple fixed ropes on short climbs to keep feet dry on the way up. Cascada Quatro was even more beautiful this time but the scoured vegetation and rock piles made it more difficult to do the climbing bypass to this falls. On thin holds and out of balance with my pack I managed to do a short climb up the arete, probably the most technically difficult part of my hike. At the lip of the falls I was impressed to see that the two former bolts had been sheared completely flat against the rock by the flood.
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| Pool of the Virgin (Cascada Quatro) |
Another thousand feet of boulder scrambling found me at the base of the awkward vertical-walled crack falls that represented my furthest upstream progress to date. This feature was quite different with a fresh and scary looking rockfall half burying the crack. I thought this might be the end of the road again but tried climbing up a corner on canyon right to at least scout what it looked like. One climb led to another climb which led to a third slabby shelf coated in gritty ball bearing rockfall. Carefully I made my way to the end of this. Right when I was thinking deadend, I found a sling of webbing to provide a reliable handhold as I swung my but over the abyss and then climbed through gaps in boulders at the base of the cliff. The rocks were angular, unstable and coated in dirt- I did not linger! I was excited to explore new parts of the canyon now.
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| The rockfall obstacle: ledges at the high left are the only way on |
Several more stunning pools and falls followed with generous splashings of California fan palms and eventually even some Mexican blue palms. Following my nose I could bypass all of these falls on canyon left. Almost every fall I encountered could be jumped with the current state of the pools, which would make for a fun time with some likeminded friends. For this trip I opted to stay dry and enjoy the remote scenery.
About three miles from the oasis and 3 miles into my hike (pace dictated by terrain, many photos, and many GPS notes), a distinct band of resistant rock descended from the north to the base of the canyon, forming a vertical-walled gorge with an incredibly deep 100-foot long pool with a 50ft waterfall plunging. My drone scouting revealed only one more downclimb above this then intermittent small pools and a few palm groves. Without significantly climbing out the canyon's left for over 600ft vertical, there was no way to continue further upstream. I sat at the edge of this pool for my only break of the hike, drinking from my water filter and downing a few snacks. It was slightly cool in the deep shadows; the falls whispered gently.
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| Última Cascada |
My break felt long and restful despite being only 15 minutes. It had taken me 3 hours to get to this terminus and I had a perfect hot spring waiting at the end so I did not linger. I made great time on my return, only 1.5 hours back. The rockfall obstacle was more straightforward the second time and I did an alternative one-way downclimb lowering myself off of a palm stump that made easy work of reaching the Pool of the Virgin. It turned out I didn't need to carry any of the 20+lbs I shouldered and could have gotten away with a snack, water filter, and camera but I was mostly just thrilled to get a nice solo scramble in with high quality scenery and remoteness. Una pequeña aventura.
Back at camp I rehydrated, soaked, and enjoyed the hammock as high clouds and a peaceful calm set in. Heather had a nice mellow day cycling between tent and hot tub. After a bit we set out for a stroll and ended up chatting with Fernando. Between my terrible Spanish I managed to communicate that I had hiked to the last falls. Seeing my picture (which he thought was the fourth falls) we both took out our phones to compare notes. Eventually I convinced him and he was impressed. He showed us the seventh of seven spring sources a short distance up the hill, which amazingly supplies all the water for the south side hot tubs (no springs there). He also mentioned he was around for the biblical flood three years ago and among other things that it was the experience of a lifetime. With that we went on a counterclockwise stroll over to the south side of the campground and then looped through the bottom of the northside. Interestingly the south side was much busier. We stopped to check out each campsite that did not have occupants, again deciding that we had picked the best site for our getaway. Dinner and many more hours of blissful soaking followed.
We had a fairly leisurely second morning between tent and hot tub until about 10am it was time to go. A few drops of rain were a surprise and a good reminder that we seemed to find the perfect window between the Christmas storm and another one coming in over New Year's. We packed up, said adios, and drove out. Halfway along the dirt road I used our shovel to plow down a grading berm onto a spur road to try to check out a canyon I was intrigued by. Initially I tried a very long straight-shot drone flight to reach the canyon section but it actually turned out with the steepness of the fan I actually did not have enough height. I hemmed and hawed deciding whether it would be worth a bouldery ankle twisting 2 mile run to try to fly a drone from the mouth of the canyon. I felt bad leaving Heather but doing the math 1.5 hours was possible to run, fly, and return. The cloud cover meant ideal temperatures, ideal flat light, and zero wind. I decided to go for it. On a knoll at the mouth of the canyon I was able to fly over extensive (seasonally abandoned) illegal grow fields and then into the narrowed canyon section with two unclimbable 115-foot falls and then a monster 250-foot falls with picturesque palm groves above a below. It would take a huge amount of effort to get there but looked stunning and the drone photos were worth the effort. I made it back to the car in 1.5 hours.
The rest of the drive was long but tolerable. I had carefully scouted a route through Mexicali to get to the border crossing which was slow but probably the best it could have been. It took us 53 minutes to get through the border crossing line, pretty much spot on the 50 minute estimate so we felt like we got through without too much drama. Calexico was a mess with southbound border crossings but eventually we hit the open road. Heather and I both decided we should make sure our next visit to Guadalupe Canyon was not so far in the future as our last visit was in the past. All in all it was three rejuvenating days.
