Anza Borrego Oct 24-25

Opting for a quick and easy weekend escape, and getting excited for desert season to get started, we snagged a campsite at Agua Caliente and drove out to the desert mid-Saturday morning. Looking for leisure and not the usual rough and tumble badlands exploration hikes I do in the area, I identified a few moderately interesting sounding hikes in the general vicinity of Agua Caliente. As we crested the saddle out of Earthquake Valley we turned off the road in Blair Valley, the first of several strange broad hanging valleys where sediment fills to a saddle and then spills over, eventually reaching the lowlands of Carrizo Valley. The meadow was a bright green and the flanking road had some surprisingly deep mud pits to bypass. The rest of the road across Blair Valley was fairly deep sand and I appreciated the extra cohesion from the recent rains. We worked our way past and following many many campervans, assuming that everyone in San Diego owned or aspired to own one. It was a beautiful Fall day. 

We started at the Marshal South Home Trailhead where I almost immediately spotted a tarantula cruising along. We worked our way up the trail climbing nearly 500ft over 0.6 miles. It was a beautiful Fall day with crisp blue skies, puffy clouds, and shadows shifting across the landscape. The desert plants, particularly the ocotillos, were looking healthy and happy after the recent rains and undoubtedly months of hardship. The trail ended at Yaquitepec, site of a bizarre experiment where an author and his family tried to live off the land on one of the most inhospitable, dry, wind-swept, sun-baked ridges I could imagine. There was little left to show other than a couple concrete water cisterns, a rusty bedframe, and fragments of adobe wall seemingly poorly made with the local grus. It was odd but the real star of the hike was the ever-changing light, choice desert vegetation along the way, and the view from Ghost Mountain over its mysterious landslides into Vallecito Valley to the south and Blair Valley to the north. 

Back at the car we drove further east for a second short hike, this one about 1.3 miles over a saddle into another hanging valley, past a prominent pictograph rock, and to the dramatic dryfall of Smuggler Canyon draining into Carrizo Valley. Once again the clouds and shadows delighted. The pictographs were in interesting textile-like patterns in a red ochre and a more subtle yellow. Dstretch enhanced images did a good job revealing that there was much more than initially met the eye, including many glyphs nearly completely washed away by time. We turned around at the dryfall and worked our way back to the car and then the pavement to drive on to our campsite.

It was about 5pm when we got situated into our narrow campsite; thankfully our neighbors were minimally obnoxious. Funnily enough I realized that South Coast Geological Society was having their annual field trip here at the same time; I recognized some familiar faces but was not feeling altogether that social. We ate dinner, drank mini-canned margaritas, and sat out on the pool deck waiting for the indoor hot pool to reopen at 6pm. As we sat we got a nice silhouetted view of kids running up and down a ridge in the middle of the campground with sunset colors and a glowing moon beyond. We enjoyed an ample amount of soaking in the hot pool remarkably chill for a Saturday night, and left to get cozy at our campsite once a slightly louder crowd began appearing.

We had a leisurely morning and went for a brief soak before leaving the campground. We drove south just past the Arroyo Tapiado turnoff and took the short spur road west to the Mountain Palm Springs Trailhead. Here we did a neat 3 mile loop past several named palm groves - Pygmy Grove, Southwest Grove, Surprise Canyon Grove, Palm Bowl Grove, North Grove. Dry rocky washes were interspersed with stands of trees, wet sand and buzzing bees occasionally hinting at water just beneath the surface. It was calm. We had the whole hike to ourselves. The densest grove, Southwest Grove, was the only one where we actually saw a standing pool of water. Today was considerably warmer than the previous day so the shade of the palms was actually appreciated. From here we took the cross-country poled route over to the next wash to the north.

We walked through Surprise Canyon Grove and dodged thorny shrubs to gain the Palm Bowl Grove which stood the most separate from the rest. After a brief snack in the shade we hiked down the wash past North Grove and back to the car. It was a surprisingly pleasant hike overall with a nice variety of sights for such a short hike.

After our hike we stopped at Casa de Pico in Grossmont for my favorite mango avocado red pepper quesadillas, and then the road back home. Thanks to Heather for a nice mellow getaway with some new sights.

Rio Chama July 18-19

 

It has been a dry 2026: for the US river permit lottery system, the western US snowpack, and me going mid-July before I got on a river. A permit for the 22mi wilderness section of the Rio Chama, a major tributary of the Rio Grande in northwestern New Mexico was the only lottery win Heather or I got this year. Grim I thought but we might as well use it. It was Heather's permit and I was grateful that she took the lead on planning, giving me a rare opportunity to show up with minimal background on the river, rapids, side hikes, camps, and terrain. We went through a slew of personnel changes on the permit but eventually ended up with 7 including Zora the dog. Although a wilderness section, the flows were controlled by scheduled releases from El Vado Reservoir just upstream of the put-in. We initially planned for a three day paddle until we realized the 500cfs recreational release shuts off Sunday afternoon for a 100cfs baseflow so we shifted plans for an overnight. In the end we opted to have one car shuttled to Chavez Canyon (Mile 22 at the end of the wilderness run) and one shuttled to Big Eddy (Mile 31 at the end of the day run section. This gave us options to finish early if progress was slow and the river was too low, to finish somewhere along the day section and run the road back to the nearest car, or to paddle the full section of the river. Heather, David, and myself detoured to check the put-in and touch the water the afternoon before (cold but very manageable without a wetsuit/drysuit) then drove the short distance to meet Keith, Kari, and Zora at our "lakefront" (the lake was a half-mile out of sight because of the low water levels) campsites and then later was joined by Maia.

We arrived at the El Vado Ranch put-in bright and early all things considered but found it already a flurry of activity with several other launches that day. The volunteer ranger checked us in before too long and ran through our required gear. It is always hard to anticipate what they are going to object to; this time they were fine with my hyper-portable firepan (required despite fires being disallowed...) and our various throw ropes, first aid kits, and PFDs, but were displeased at our carefully constructed poop tubes because we were apparently a large enough group that we needed to bring a full ammo can toilet that we would have no way of transporting. After a little bit of a hard time he let it pass.

At 10am we were finally on the water, the first group to push out. The scenery started with an open valley of Morrison Formation bedded mudstones lightly covered in pinyon-juniper forest before sandstone cliffs began to rise from the river. There were remarkably few pools on the river as the current remained pretty consistent between the many light riffles. Happily we made 3-3.5 mph progress with some occasional paddling which meant a more relaxed less grindy trip. At four miles in we made a brief snack stop at the hot spring set in a marsh a stone throw away from the river. The temperature and depth were perfect but it was hard not to cloud the water by stirring up the silt floor. I was the only one to fully emerge as everyone else was content to soak their feet on the edge. It was too bad the hot spring was not further along; it would have been pleasant to camp near.

We continued on down the river, soon realizing it was very much like the San Juan River with named rapids being not much more than slightly splashy read-and-run riffles. It was a very chill river, easy to make a constant pace with a nice variety of scenery- much better than expected. The camps we past were very nicely laid out with signposts and rock stairways leading in to nice flats such that you really could not go wrong with any of the camps. The scraggily pinyon forest led us into lusher Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir draped on rising cliff-banded canyon walls. We saw a few other groups but most of the time had the river to ourselves. The only annoyance was the compromised valve on my seat which meant that I had to stop to reinflate my seat every 20 minutes or so. At about Mile 10 we stopped to scout Aragon Rapid as we were advised if we were going to scout one it should be this. It was a very straightforward read-and-run; as we later found out, some of the day section rapids actually had a bit more bite to them. As the day got on the thunderstorm clouds built. The river also evolved from a cold and clear reservoir flow to a cool murky-brown from all the acquired suspended sediment from the local rocks. The last camp was at Mile 18 so at Mile 15 we began to enter the zone where we should look for a camp, especially after passing a couple occupied ones and the draw of having our camp set up before any thunderstorm descended on us. At Mile 15.4 I pulled in to check out Entrada Camp which I thought perfectly pleasant and we called it a day at 4pm.

Quite scenic really!

Aragon Rapid

We had a nice and chill evening in camp. I ended up going for a solo half-mile hike behind camp to climb a ridge and traverse across to gain the top of the prominent sandstone cliff towering over the river. From here I got great views downstream towards the Chama Wall and upstream towards Navajo Peak. It was an incredibly sweaty humid hike but I was glad I made the effort. Thunderstorms and rain threatened for a time but largely missed us.

Entrada Camp

We put on at about 8:30a in the morning, giving us plenty of day to wrap up our river trip. We passed underneath Chama Wall, the largest sandstone bluff on the river, after the first riverbend from camp. Owing to our early start we passed many other groups still in camp and had the river to ourselves. Around Mile 20 the river got annoyingly flat requiring very deliberate paddling for about a mile. Also around this section the confined forested canyon gave way to a wide valley of multi-tiered slopes. Keith, Kari, Maia, and Zora opted to get off the river at Chavez Canyon (Mile 22 at 10am), while Heather, David, and I came this far and we interested in the bonus 9 miles of the day run to our car. 

Chama Wall

The Chavez boat launch was bristling with activity and unsurprisingly we saw several other groups paddling along the day section. The scenery was not quite on par with the wilderness run but the day section actually had better rapids (still read-and-run riffles) and allowed us to keep a 3 mph pace. The temperature was warm with clouds building already but pleasantly complimented the slight chill of the river. Apart from light scraping of the occasional ghost rock hiding in the murky water the 500cfs flow were no real issue. We made it to Big Eddy a little before 2pm and had the bollards near the boat dock drying our gear in the warm sun while we took a few laps floating down the refreshing river against the cliffs here. Fairly efficiently and with most gear dry, we loaded up and drove out the the highway. 

We drove lonely desolate roads counter-clockwise around the massif of Valles Caldera (a new drive for me), passing by and through some very impressive roving thunderstorms. Weighing our grim camping options in this part of the reservation, we eventually came up with a plan to book a cheap hotel in Gallup then to spend a few hours passing through Petrified Forest on the way home.

While the effort and cost-per-mile with permits and shuttle to get to the Rio Chama does not give me much interest in a repeat, I thought it was a very worthwhile stretch of river and I think we all were more impressed with it than we thought we would be and had a great trip. Special thanks to Heather for spearheading the trip logistics as trip leader.

Mesa Verde NP July 16-17

 

Somehow Mesa Verde National Park had managed to elude me until now, probably because of its location at the Colorado corner of the Colorado Plateau, furthest away from the places I usually make efforts to visit. Prior to our Rio Chama river trip we decided to tack on a couple days exploring Mesa Verde to help justify the effort to drive here. I've long enjoyed the mystery, uniqueness, and sense of place conveyed by cliff dwellings and have sought them out, particularly some of the excellent find-and-explore-yourself ones around Comb Ridge, Cedar Mesa, and Natural Bridges. The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde are some of the largest around with several complexes with more than a hundred rooms. I was interested to see these, even knowing the need for ranger-led tours, paved trails, and early 1900s reconstructions would detract from the experience. 

After a stormy night in our campsite next to Jackson Gulch Reservoir near Mancos, we drove to the park entrance station. Notably my annual parks pass just expired and I disappointingly had to purchase a new 2026 pass with Trump's self-appointed scowling face under "America the Beautiful" text. It was a rude start to trying to celebrate visiting a new national park and as I write this I can still feel the gross weight of it glaring through my wallet. We followed the park entrance road as it climbed the crest of the cuesta and then meandered in and out along the heads of the southward draining valleys. The terrain was subdued here with no cliffs in sight other than the north escarpment down to Montezuma Valley and pretty sparse remnant pinyon-juniper forest. The parched terrain was further accentuated by the scars of many significant fires over the last several decades including most notably the 2000 Bircher Fire that burned 22,000 acres, 2002 Long Mesa Fire, and 2000 Pony Fire which each showed essentially no sign of recovery. Even more than a melting glacier, this park punctuates a dramatic changing climate: flowing springs and verdant gardens that once supported thousands of people in vibrant communities now replaced by barely moist seeps and forests of lifeless blackened trunks on the desolate mesatops.

First up was our 9am tour of Balcony House. Billed as the most adventurous tour, it involved climbing a steep 30 foot-high ladder to gain the dwelling and crawling along a dark, narrow passageway to exit. It was a mid-sized village of 38 rooms and two kivas. Although the ruins themselves are on a balcony halfway up a vertical cliff, the house got its name for well-preserved adobe ledges at the front of several of the two-story buildings that were used to travel between rooms. The extensive and somewhat crude reconstruction efforts detracted some from the sights but you could still get a small sense of what it must have been like to call this cliff-clinging village home by walking through the passageways and standing on the patio between the twin roofless kivas. We clung towards the back of the tour group which allowed me to get several views without our fellow tourists. I appreciated the unrushed pace of all the tours we went on in the park.  We all agree that of the three tours we did this one felt the most intimate (like we were in it) as you could peer through small windows and have views reveal themselves at the end of dark hallways. Relatedly, I probably took more photos of this tour than the others. The kiva floors and walls were some of the best we saw (but again probably sharply reconstructed). I also enjoyed seeing the different generations of buildings and how they amalgamated to build the village. I never did get a complete explanation of how the inhabitants commuted to and from this most cliffy of cliff dwellings we visited.

A nice example of a balcony spanning multiple generations of construction

An intimate window between the two main plazas at the site

Detail of a kiva in the foreground

With time before our 11:30a tour of Cliff Palace, we drove to the museum complex for a snack and a short walk to an overlook of Spruce Tree House, the third largest cliff dwelling in the park at 130 rooms and 8 kivas. In the past there was an opportunity to self-guide this ruin but the trail was closed so we had to be content viewing it across the canyon with binoculars. The most prominent feature was an impressive three-story wall containing a block of at least 8 rooms set behind a prominent kiva and plaza. A lush woodland in front of the ruins contrasted with the oranges of the cliffs and structures.

Spruce Tree House

Next up was the Cliff Palace tour which started at its overlook. Of over 600 cliff dwellings in the park, Cliff Palace is the singular one that people associate with Mesa Verde. It is the largest cliff dwelling on North America with 150 rooms and 23 kivas (an oddly large number suggesting it was an important social and ceremonial site for not just the inhabitants but others in the region and on the contemporary mesatop villages). Less a palace and more of a sprawling metropolis, it really was noteworthy for its stairstepping levels and depth towards the dark back of the alcoves. My favorite features were how some of the towers were built into the boulders and outcrop on the floor and also the now-inaccessible storage ledge well up the overhang of the cliff that was not visible from the lookout above. The tour itself was less interactive than the previous, as we largely just walked the path along the front of the ruins with a short detour to gather around one of the kivas. There was a lot going on wherever you looked with layer after layer of structures (the frontispiece highlights this nicely).

Cliff Palace (and below)

After Cliff Palace we drove the loop around Chapin Mesa checking out the roadside stops. The museum was a bust as the exhibits were closed for renovations. Towards the start we stopped at the overlook for Square Tower House, another famous and imposing structure masterfully built into the wall of the alcove. It was not until looking at my photos later that I noticed the stacked rocks on a sketchy sloping ledge ABOVE the tower- count me thoroughly impressed!

Square Tower House (and below)

Notice the stacked rocks above and left of the tower!

Like most visitors, I did not fully appreciate the extent, importance, and deeper history of the villages and pueblos on the mesatops above the cliffs. Along the driving loop were many stops to see some of these partially excavated, housed within structures to protect them from the elements. While these are much less to look at and appreciate compared to the cliff dwellings, the interpretive signs did a good job painting a more thorough picture of life on Mesa Verde 1500 to 700 years ago. At my favorite of these mesa sites was an example of three separate generations of kivas built overprinting each other with the oldest structure stratigraphically the lowest. The heavily reconstructed Sun Temple was another oddity with its combination of both rounded and squared walls. Partway through we stopped at the roadside stand to have some powdered sugar Navajo fry bread. Along some of the rim roads we could see the otherworldy spire of Shiprock erupting from the plateau a solid 45 miles to the southwest.

Three generations of overprinted kivas (left, right, then center)

Sun Temple detail

Just as thunderstorms descended on us we exited the park and caught up with my friend Jeff in Mancos. He gave us an impromptu tour of the Alpacka Raft factory which was actually really cool to see. We got to see the different machines and stations that transform the raw fabrics into hand-crafted works of modern form and function. After that we had appetizers in the local wine-and-book hangout, then a meal before returning to our campsite outside of town (dodging the many deer along the way). As continued throughout our trip, we had pleasantly cool monsoon-fueled sleeping temperatures. 

The following day we stopped at the bakery in town and then drove the longer road out to Wetherill Mesa at the far side of the park for our Long House tour. We walked the trail through a charred skeleton of a forest to our meeting site then shortly began the tour.

Long House (150 rooms, 21 kivas) is nearly equal in size to the more famous Cliff Palace but actually probably housed considerably more people based on its layout. This too had a now-inaccessible upper storage level above the dwellings. I enjoyed this tour more than Cliff Palace as we got to climb and ladder to go up into the shadows at the back of the alcove and look out. Back here was the crucial life-sustaining spring. An intricate network of carved channels in the bedrock floor leading to perfect ladle-shaped depressions was one of the more unique features we saw and was really special. It was easy to imagine people crouched over to scoop water out of this delicate water source. The spring's modern flow is clearly much less than it used to be, another clear sign of shifting climates and a more verdant pas

Long House (and below)

Carved pathways and cupules to channel drinking water from the spring

After the tour we took the short hike down to Step House near the parking lot. Though the only self-guided cliff dwelling, it had much less interest to me apart from the reconstruction of a pit house.

With that we had a brief stop at the fancy new visitor center at the park entrance (the only infrastructure at the park not in a state of decay) and drove east with a pupusa stop in Durango and then a brief stop to check out the riverside hot springs in the center of Pagosa Springs before driving on to our campsite near our Rio Chama put-in. 

Overall we had a nice day and a half in Mesa Verde, satisfied at seeing most of what is on offer for public viewing and a little deeper appreciation for life 700 years ago. I was certainly appreciative of the tours as it would be a much different experience if we were purely limited to distant overlooks. Thanks to Jeff for the catchup, apps, and factory tour.