Back out to the badlands to painstakingly log some mud cave survey. Being my first trip back out since April 2025, I was curious to see if any of the rain events led to some notable changes. This time around a 5am departure got me to the Domelands turnoff a little before 8a to meet Carol and Fredrik. We went through the usual routine of carpooling to the trailhead, packing, and hiking our commute route to the badlands west of Andrade Canyon. This time we would head far west to Realm of the Rattler, so named for a snake I was not delighted to see ahead of me in a fairly constricted crawl passage. From Andrade we went up, across, then down and up, down and up, down and then a final up and over into the Rattler catchment. I unfortunately forgot how unpleasant the cave immediately downstream was and so we brute force went through it with our packs instead of more intelligently bypassing it. It was a slowish 2 hours of travel by the time we arrived.
After a snack at the resurgence entrance we split at 11am, with Carol and Fredrik heading in the resurgence, and I working my way over the cave to survey the submergence entrance solo. As I approached the entrance I got a surprise with a small Desert Kit Fox darting out the entrance, it as surprised to see me as I was it. As I readied my gear for the solo survey I painfully learned that my tablet and survey device were both at 20% battery despite me charging them right before. Later at home I realized the GFCI was tripped on the socket I was charging them which explained the mystery. Despite the threat of the battery dying on one of my devices, I was fortunate that I ended up having just enough to get through the day's survey.
Desert Kit Fox after darting from the shade of a mud cave entrance
The survey was fairly brutal, certainly the least enjoyable I have done in the badlands. My knees were bleeding and my arms thoroughly scratched by the end of it. Some knee crawling led to about 100 feet of pleasant standing passage which then broke down into some knee crawl meandering bends and then an uber terrible helmet-off abrasion squeeze. I struggled inch by inch to a particularly tight constriction that I would have to widen to get through. Awkwardly in the squeeze I managed to set a survey station with some green flagging and with one eye I shot a further station to a fairly distinct flat topped rock. A strong draft told me the cave continued downstream to another entrance. My sincere hope was that this was the worst and only squeeze and I could merely go to the next entrance down, and head up the stream passage to continue my survey. I also tagged the couple upper level passages to thoroughly tie-off all the passage in this submergence entrance.
Back at the entrance I drank some water and climbed back up the mud slope to stage my gear at the sinkhole entrance 60 ft downstream. This was steeper and harder to get into than I remembered and I had to take care to kick in some footsteps and choose my handholds wisely, inevitably letting loose a cloud of dust. Eventually I made it down the two tiered slope to the stream passage at the bottom. I left everything behind except the instrument, tablet, flagging, and spare light, and belly crawled into a smaller passage than I hoped. On and on I went around several tight twisting bends, near constantly cursing and every time thinking the next bend must be the squeeze. Interestingly I found a few patches of very wet mud cracked mud for the first time in the badlands. I must have gone down at least 100 ft of passage until I got to a mud collapse area I could imagine was the other side of my squeeze. With much cursing and unpleasantness I poked my head into the helmet-off squeeze. I could not see the flagging. Curses! I wiggled inch by painful inch forward, my head cocked at uncomfortable angles as I tried to cast my light forward. Finally the glint of the green survey station!!!
With a huge relief at this connection landmark, I could then work out which rock was my end of survey, then backsight to it. I had just enough time to place a few more stations and end my survey at a comfortable spot with a clear station to revisit. I was thrilled to be able to make the connection; I don't think many would have the patience or determination to deal with the horrible thing. I carefully climbed back out and rejoined Carol and Fredrik a few minutes after our scheduled 2:45p. I managed 35 stations for 100m of survey while they did 16 stations with Carol learning how to digital survey. We compared notes as we snacked and drank and then decided on our exit from the badlands. It was my first time sketching with a dedicated stylus on a Samsung tablet and I really enjoyed the precision upgrade over my finger. I marveled at how sinuous the cave was; the end of my 100m survey was only about 25m from where I started!
I suspected it would be quicker to recross the many ups and downs through the badlands back to Andrade Canyon but there was some enthusiasm from the other two to climb straight up out of the badlands up the steep bedrock slope to the ridge, which I had done once before. Slowly we climbed 800ft vertical up the slope, gaining a spectacular panoramic view over the badlands from the top.
Once on the ridgetop of the Coyote Mountains we still had some up and down as we followed an old jeep trail back towards the wash network at the head of Andrade Canyon. We got a nice pink sunset and then made the final jaunt in the very last light.
The 80 minute drive was brutal on my neglected stomach but Carol and Fredrik joined me for some tasty Mexican at Casa de Pico, which I had been craving, then we parted with full stomachs. Once again it was an annoyingly large amount of effort and long day for 100m of cave survey which more more to survey to finish the cave. I can only hope the "missing link" portion we haven't seen is somehow magically large pleasant passage.
Looking for a day trip escape, Heather mapped out a 6.5 mile loop hike on some seldom visited trails in Indian Canyons near Palm Springs. We arrived around 8:30am to a pleasantly empty Palm Canyon parking lot and packed lightly for the hike. Down the hill into the shade of the palm grove I was caught off guard by the slight chill that would soon wear off. The creek was a mere baseflow trickle, much less than I was expecting. We hiked up the main trail of Palm Canyon, having it all to ourselves. We both were surprised at the verdant greenery from the recent holiday rains.
We passed the main trail junction above the palms and continued up the wash of the East Fork. Despite no visible surface water, two interesting hillside travertine deposits and palms extending intermittently for a thousand feet signaled some springs. The wash was actually more engaging than I could have guessed with many meanders, shifting sights, interesting outcrops, and several dryfalls requiring climbing or bypassing.
After almost 2 miles along the wash we branched onto the loop connector that took us across the rolling hills on the eastern shoulder of Palm Canyon. At intervals there were nice patches of barrel cacti but this was overall the most desolate part of the hike. The different rock types and slanting turtleback of the San Jacintos made for dramatic landscapes from this vantage. This loop trail was advertised as being great for cholla patches but we really only saw one minor patch. At another junction we turned onto the Vandeventer Trail which took us back to Palm Canyon. The quiet shady grove we had before was now sunny and noisy with tourists. We made it back to the car, covering 6.6 miles in 2.5 hours.
Heather was ready for lunch (and I was hungry) but I still wanted a quick detour to see a little more water at Andreas Canyon. Despite the busy parking lot, we found a spot easily enough and had a quick stroll upcanyon to some of the deeper pools and taller cascades.
We ended our day out with a tasty meal and refreshing drinks at Native Foods in Palm Desert, then drove on home. The hike was better than I would have guessed and well worth the effort.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We aimed to get back from our trip a day earlier than planned to make the post-trip transition back to work a little less stressful, but that did not mean we could not still squeeze in several near-roadside rock art detours before exiting the plateau for the multi-state drive back home. Our first quick stop was a mere half-mile up the paved road to check out some high-contrast pictographs, many figures very similar in style to those at the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon only. This panel had unfortunately seen much better days with extensive spalling probably removing about half of the art and of course modern graffiti defacing what is left. Still, worth a quick stop to appreciate what remains.
Our next quick stop was a mere 150ft away from Interstate-70, but we approached it the legal way with a 0.8 mile drive on a rough road then a third of a mile jaunt down into a sandy wash and a short climb up to the overhanging varnished panel. This petroglyph panel is known as the Tree of Life for its very tidy central element of a idealized symmetrical tree shrouded by a rainbow-like cover. Interestingly the tree has a flat ground beneath, which my memory thinks may be the first time I have seen a distinct ground represented in Colorado Plateau rock art. Other elements surround including some common motifs I have seen elsewhere. It was a nice panel, made surreal by its constant view of speeding vehicles on the interstate.
With time for another detour, we turned off to drive the lonely Moore Cutoff Road across the gently tilted layers of Sand Bench. I had not planned to go this way and so did a double-take when I spotted a small pulloff as we cut through the gap in Molen Reef. I turned around to park and sure enough we quickly spotted several very nice petroglyph panels on boulder surfaces. A bonus gallery stop! I was most impressed at a single large sinuous snake that stretched over 5ft across a boulder to fill a panel and a much more subtle but intricate lizard-sized lizard that very well could have been carved in a place the artist saw a lizard. Researching later, there were apparently also dinosaur tracks to see here but I did not notice any.
Through the Molen Reef we turned off onto a nicely graded Emery TV Tower Road to a BLM roundabout at the end of the road. A well-manicured trail switchbacked down the hill to contour along the base of a sandstone cliff to a notable promontory at its confluence with Muddy Creek. There was a collection of several nice panels with dense and intricate rock art but the namesake Rochester Panel was a clear standout and one of the best single petroglyph panels I had ever seen. A portion of the rock had chipped off (at least some definitely unnaturally) and some ubiquitous modern graffiti was still present, but it was a fascinating collection of glyphs to contemplate. Some of the glyphs are thought to date back 2000 years to the Fremont Culture. Several generations of desert varnish, overlap, and styles indicate a complex site visited and revisited for millennia. In contrast to the day's previous brief art appreciations, we easily spent 20 minutes examining the different elements trying to make sense of them. A bear facing off with a many-pointed elk was one of the less ambiguous groupings. One glyph looked to be the spitting image of a crocodile, while another curiously looked like a hippo. A couple groupings looked like they could be interpreted as procreation scenes. Below is just a sampling of what we saw. It was all very elaborate and well worth the detour to see.
With four rock sites in our pocket for the day we ended our gallery tour and regained the I-15 corridor past the edge of the plateau where temperatures climbed up into the 60s. We stopped in for a meet-and-greet and shoe pickup at Ryan's place in Cedar City, easily killing an hour talking about minerals and oooing and aweing over them. Then it was just the long familiar drive back home and the many cleaning activities. Cleaning the car was a solid effort, including 30 minutes of pressure washing about 50lbs of caked mud out of wheel wells and the undercarriage. All-in-all it was pleasant getaway with mostly cooperating weather and a nice mix of new-to-me sites and familiar classics. The lack of people more than made up for the short days and cold nights. Thanks to Heather.
