Carrizo Badlands April 1-2

An unexpected byproduct of caving in Belize was meeting other southern California cavers that had an interest in exploring and mapping mud caves including the less known area of the Carrizo Badlands north of Domelands close to the CA/Mexico border. Carol rallied the troops to get us to commit to a weekend before things got too hot out in the low desert. The two of us carpooled out to Arroyo Tapiado to tackle a few small outstanding projects Carol had, admiring the surprisingly low snow levels on the flank of Palomar Mountain and the grand wildflower displays throughout the drive including purple carpets of Desert Sand Verbana in Anza Borrego. We drove up the wash network to Arroyo Tapiado, which was rather busy with 4WD vehicles and mud cave explorers. We stopped in the shade beneath a wash wall and came up with a plan. First we located and poked into Dipslope Cave, a future survey target. Then we located and GPS'd the wash level entrance to Booby Trap Cave (it looked tight!). After this we packed our daypacks to hike up a very steep chute to the wash's rim for our more lengthy goals. We scouted around some of the blind valleys west of Concretion Canyon, poking in several holes and daring not to enter some of the exposed 20ft+ deep pit entrances. We climbed down a dusty entrance to a point that Carol could confirm was Lost Cave and then GPS'd the entrance so that it remains found!

We then hiked over to the upper entrance to Hidden Cave and had a quick snack in the modest but cool entrance chamber there while we discussed the geology before tackling our survey lead. Down the passage we went until reaching the rope drop in the cave. From here we surveyed tie-in shots back upstream to the small tributary passage that entered on the true right. This is a passage that Carol had traversed to an entrance decades previously and wanted to tie off with a survey. Thankfully we left our bags at the entrance but boy did we suffer in this rediculously narrow serpentine passage. It was so sinuous and tight that we had several survey shots averaging 2 ft as we went around the bends and overall we surveyed about 150ft having only traveled 50ft in a straight line! My helmet barely fit through the tight passage and every movement kicked up a cloud of dust and contributed to our head to toe coating. It was certainly some of the most unpleasant and challenging surveying I have done before. Probably less than half of the way down this passage we hit a more recently active mudflow area filling the passage such that it was too tight to continue. It was a bummer to not emerge at an entrance and to have to backtrack down the passage but our survey ended up bring the total cave length to 1443ft, making it the longest surveyed cave in Arroyo Tapiado, if not longest mud cave in California!

We rounded out the evening by eating dinner at a campsite at the Vallecito Campground. We strategically waited until 7:30p when we found our way into the warm main pool at Agua Caliente Campground nearby (after showering the dust off!). We sat in the hot pool for a solid hour which was a much deserved break after the dusty surveying we did earlier. It was windy all night but I managed to sleep well.

With a 9:00am meeting time we had a leisurely morning and drive to the Domelands turnoff. Once Fredrik and Kyle arrived we drove out to the trailhead, decided on a route, and set off hiking. Flowers continued to be numerous as we strolled down the ever shifting landscape of Andrade Canyon. The mud badland wash shifted into the craggy metamorphic canyon that gains vertical conglomerate cliffs above after a while. At the exposed 15ft downclimb we had a new surprise: a recent rockfall covered the sloping top of the climb in ball-bearing sand and gravel making the climb particularly sketchy. I acted as a meat anchor for the others and then when my time came to free climb it I got scared. I instead made a not great anchor and left the rope in place for our return. Once down the climb and a few minor downclimbs beyond we strolled on down the canyon. In its mud badland middle section we scoped out a few cave entrances and then continued on down through the shadows of the vertical-walled conglomerate corridor. Once more downclimb and hallway brought us out into the bright sun of the vast badlands proper.

Looking down the Andrade Canyon downclimb

I led the way up a nearby tributary and a steep mud ridge to the fossiliferous sandstone slickrock. Here we dropped packs in the shade and scrambled up the cool narrows of Sand Dollar Slot, which was as good as I remembered it. I think everyone appreciated the detour but the day was getting on and we should probably think about trying to survey something.

After a lunch break we continued on down the wash, arriving at the dryfall created by a resistant oyster bed. I showed everyone the way we skirted it last time on the steep crumbly slopes. Immediately below was the sloping pavement of fossil shells leading into the dramatic upper entrance of Jenga Cave. We dropped packs and gave everyone a chance to walk through and explore before we broke into two survey teams. The others were thoroughly impressed and excited to survey it which I was glad for. There are almost certainly longer caves in this largely unexplored region of the badlands, but unlikely to be larger passages as this seems to be the only trunk wash that had a section that went subterranean and passage size seems to scale with catchment size.

Upper entrance to Jenga Cave

I gave the cave the name Jenga Cave the previous trip after the precarious pile of boulders clogging the downstream entrance; I was happy to the pile was there precarious as ever and so the name held. After some frantic photo snapping we got to work surveying. Thankfully Carol sketched so my brain was free to ponder the geology of the caves rather than be bogged down by the mental burden of sketching. It was so rewarding to work our way through this spacious cave with 20-30ft survey shots after our 2ft shots the previous day. It turned out there were several discrete oyster bed layers visible in the cave. Generally they seemed to form the sloping roof of passages. Carol and I surveyed our way to the downstream entrance and even had time to survey an interesting higher level overflow tube that formed a loop.

Precarious pile at the lower entrance of Jenga Cave

After we all wrapped up our survey we packed up and headed out the downstream entrance back into the bright badlands. On the way looping back to Andrade Canyon we stopped at several mud cave outlets. I was thrilled and surprised to see that virtually every entrance that was sloughed over with a mud crust on my last trip here 2.5 years ago had been blown out by a more recent flood event and several were now very enticing leads for a future trip. Every one had cool air emerging suggesting a connection to an upper entrance. This blowout state seemed to be a regional phenomenon, meaning the caves are currently in a great condition to explore as compared to 2 years previous. We detoured to walk/crouch through Golden Skylight Cave that I found on a previous trip. We made our way up Andrade and the dryfall climb without incident. It was fairly late by the time we arrived back at the trailhead and said our goodbyes. It was a great little hike where we managed to spend most of the day in pleasant shade. We were very productive in completing the survey of a regionally important cave (411ft surveyed length) and the area proved to be even more promising for mud cave exploration than I suspected from my previous trip. We did not see a single other person on our hike (and I found one mylar balloon). Coyote Mountains remain one of the great explorative treasures of southern California. Thanks to Carol and Fredrik for the push to further explore.

Box Springs Paragliding Mar 28

It has been a while since I posted anything about paragliding but since my spring break is rapidly turning into a "staycation" and I happened to play around with my GoPro I figured I might as well. This was my 75th flight at my backyard Box Springs launch, but what made it notable was that it was the first time I have not flown here solo. I had a social hike up the Two Trees Trail with Chad and we met his cousin Jake at the upper carpark. A short jaunt along the Edison Trail and then surprisingly good burro trails led to Chad's launch about 200 ft higher than my standard launch. It was about 2 pm, earlier than I typically launch, and so I was quite happy to take my time learning by watching the other two launch and fly. The launch was slightly awkward between the wind, long weedy grass, bushes and boulders, and slightly cross wind but Chad managed to get up quickly. He gained good height above launch but I could see he had variable conditions with strong lift then equally strong sink. He had a solid 25 minute flight and landed before Jake launched. Jake gained good height right away. 

Thinking this could be a good condition learning opportunity I decided to descend down to my standard launch I am comfortable with. Sure enough I was able to easily ride lift up above the upper launch, which was a good note for future reference. There was a steady west wind such that headward progress was particularly slow. Other than the occasional jolty lift the conditions were smoother than I expected. I worked the bowl to gain height and then ventured over the C and around the corner to the Moreno Valley side with the best patches of poppies. I hit some sink and so fought back headward to over the C then back to the bowl for more lift. I topped out at about 3300 ft, a thousand feet over my launch but could see that Jake was well over 4000 ft further back above the main ridge. I could have worked the bowl further and then gone deeper over the range like Jake but wanted to take the opportunity to fly over Two Trees Canyon, the rock climbing area, and tag my house. I was able to milk a little more lift near the end of Blaine but not quite enough to climb back up to the top of the bowl and so after a few passes came in for a landing on the south field. My flight was a little over a half hour. Jake won the day flying well over an hour and managing to top land near his parked car. All in all it was a nice afternoon out and I learned a lot from flying with others. Psychologically I find it a lot easier too.

Deep Creek Mar 23

Keith organized Tim and I into standby for a Santa Margarita or Deep Creek run; Santa Margarita was at 270 cfs and dropping in the morning while Deep Creek seemed to be holding at 950 cfs so we met up and drove out to Hesperia. We parked at the Mojave Dam and did the usual 6 mile PCT hike-in in about 2.5 hrs. From the trail we got some views of some juicy looking rapids and a few nice slopes of yellow wildflowers. Snow level was probably less than a thousand feet in elevation above us. After the Rainbow Bridge, Kinley Creek had a good amount of water in it, prompting a brain-freeze barefoot walk across it. There was a 2 person inflatable boat attached to a rope across the creek at the hot springs. When we first arrived there was only one person that had hiked in the same way as us, but within 20 minutes there was nearly a dozen people that had come down from Bowen Ranch and crossed in the boat. We ate our quick lunches while soaking in the hot springs for about 20 minutes then it was time to go, already somehow about 3pm. 

I immediately noticed that the willows were less of an issue than I remembered and the boulder garden rapids had cleaned up considerably at this flow. We would later find out the flow was actually 1100 cfs, nearly double what I had previously run. It was fast and a little pushy with lots of split second decisions and blind commitments. I was feeling a little off for some reason and so played it a little cautious, portaging a few of the rapids that Keith and Tim ran including the nice bedrock corner rapid (frontispiece) and The Flume rapid. The Arid Piles portage sucked but we got through it, hopefully without poison oak contact, and put-in back at the Rainbow Bridge. The whole section to the bridge took us a lot longer than I think we were expecting. 

There were a few more long and complex rapids between the bridge and Prime Time Falls including one more long one I chose to portage. The dramatic spray of Prime Time Falls was an easy cue of when it was time to portage. The falls looked impressive at this flow and I questioned why I tried to run it on my first time down this section.

Group photo thanks to hiker!

Prime Time Falls

Immediately below Prime Time is another rapid nearly as intimidating, a steep, bumpy channel that slams into a wall below. We all portaged this and each had our own struggle trying to ferry across the flow to get downstream. At some point Tim flipped and I lost my paddle recovering his. Tim and Keith each flipped a couple times; I had some close calls (and a few portages) but no flips. We past the last rapid of consequence above the bend above the gauge and floated out casually the rest of the way, spotting a few beavers en route. We took out at 7 pm (late!) and carried boats up the dam access road for the nice clean asphalt area at the top. We all had a great trip. I'm getting excited for the possibility of trying out the full 14 mile run starting near Arrowhead at some point. I'm guessing 800-1000 cfs is probably my sweet spot now that I have seen it at 1100 cfs. Thanks to Keith for making it happen.

Malibu Creek Mar 8

A run totally off my radar, Eric roadside scouted a few sections of Malibu Creek on Monday including a neat bedrock gorge section and reported back that it looked great. Apparently Malibu Creek has a very different much lower rate of fall following rains compared to most SoCal rivers and so we put together a foursome of Eric, Keith, Gavin, and myself to check it out Wednesday. It seemed rare and worthwhile enough that I rallied to restructure my work week to make it happen. Keith and I carpooled from Redlands, battling the morning traffic width-wise across Los Angeles for over 2.5 hours. Thankfully Gavin and Eric arrived early to set our shuttle and so we met them at our Piuma Bridge put-in, 5 miles upriver of the Pacific Ocean. I did not know what to expect and so got worried when I walked underneath the bridge to find a channel with a mere trickle in it; thankfully it turned out the water was in the furthest channel initially hidden out of sight. It took much longer than it should have to get ready and we finally pushed into the river around 11am.

It started initially as a class II bash through confined vegetation obstacles, then some flow joined at the confluence of Cold Creek a few minutes on. Some sort of concrete weir was passed and then soon the sandstone boulders began. There were some interesting sections with quick blind turns around car+ boulders and some scouting and portaging the more choked sections. At the flow we had things were mellow and fun, low stress as we worked our way down. It was just a beautiful pleasant day out. 

Bedrock became more prominent, improving the quality of the rapids considerably and starting the best quarter-mile section. The scenery and whitewater unburdened my mind.

We could see the sandstone walls closing in to a narrows downstream with an excellent drop-pool section including a single fairly clean 8-foot falls. This reach was truly spectacular and I felt a long way away from southern California, let alone Los Angeles. Just before the last pool at the end we stopped for lunch to savor this spot a little longer, only a mile into our 5 mile run to the sea. Healthy looking dudleyas hung from cracks in the towering cliffs. The sandstone had some nice tafoni in places.

The next mile was a mix of vegetation and smaller boulder slaloming, overall decent quality but with few standout features. The 100-foot tall Rindge Dam announced itself very clearly. We found the bypass trail on river left easily enough and I took care to work my way down the muddy trail dodging boat puncturing yuccas and poison oak. The spray and winds at the base of the dam raged impressively.

Oof. The mile below the dam was thoroughly choked with rocks and logs which slowed us down and caused light despair at our rate of forward progress. We pulled out the hand saw a few times to clear some channels and a couple other times I lifted branches to allow the hardshellers passage. A straining branch caught Eric and forced a swim; we spent probably 20 minutes trying to find his paddle when it miraculously appeared braced against a rock downstream. There were a few good moments in there amongst the jank.

The vegetation chokes became less frequent but also the creek gradient notably dropped too. The canyon began to open up and before too long we could see fancy homes and palm trees. We passed underneath a low bridge then under Pacific Coast Highway, then riffles into the coastal lagoon and river mouth. I was happy to avoid dealing with saltwater on all my gear but the others paddled straight into the ocean and played in the waves for a bit. It was a beautiful clear day with Palos Verde Peninsula and Catalina Island visible on the horizon. 

We walked the beach trail about 10 minutes back to the parking lot. All in all it was a great trip. It took us a little over 5 hours to go 5 miles but I really enjoyed the run. The highlights were the fantastic bedrock gorge section and fighting through the vegetation ended up being worth the novelty of paddling all the way to the sea. Thanks to Keith, Eric, and Gavin for an awesome day out. It was refreshing to see that there was still some more to explore in southern California.