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ziphius Posts: 911
4/22/2013
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One night car camp and rattlesnakefest. Within minutes of parking, we had seen a prairie falcon, which quickly disappeared. Starting with the photo of the 'photo of the trip', shot by Alex near Pena Spring, here is a Vivid Dancer (Argia vivida):
Pena Spring isn't more than 0.5 mile from the camping area near Culp Valley and was providing about 1 gallon per minute. I dumped a liter over my head and it was COLD!
Some morteros in the vicinity. No pottery or flaked stone sightings.
Butterfly shot by Alex:
Alex in a standoff with a rattlesnake:
We did the descent from Pena Spring to the upper reaches of Hellhole Canyon, including some ascents in the direction of The Thimble so that we could scout out a reasonable way down:
Getting downslope wasn't easy:
Getting back up wasn't either, especially having to worry about rattlers at every move (we ended up with only 2 rattler sightings.... we expected a bunch more):
The canyon bottom was choked with plants, sycamores, and cottonwoods, which made any crossing of the canyon impractical given our time limitations.
Within minutes of leaving the campground, Alex spotted a prairie falcon (which might have been the same bird we saw the day before), but alas, it was moving too quickly for photography.
edited by ziphius on 12/2/2014
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dsefcik Administrator Posts: 2622
4/23/2013
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Nice TR....the rattlesnake shot is great, up in the air and tongue out...
What were the temps like?
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ziphius Posts: 911
4/23/2013
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dsefcik wrote:
Nice TR....the rattlesnake shot is great, up in the air and tongue out...
What were the temps like?
Daren, yeah, the posture on that snake was very cool, hadn't really seen that behavior up close before. We estimated the temperature to be in the low 80s, based on high temp reports of 81 from Ranchita (~1000 ft above us) and 95 degrees at Borrego Springs (3000 ft below us) that day. - Jim
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surfponto Administrator Posts: 1364
4/24/2013
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Nice Rattlesnake face off photo and closeup.
He looks pretty pissed
I am sure the sound was awesome! 
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anutami Posts: 491
4/27/2013
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Nice rattler, we are on our 3rd rattle snake sighting at our house !!! Usually the big daddy's are pretty docile. Did you provoke that one for a photo op?  That is a great shot. I am bummed how rattlers have been given a bad wrap and are so easily "discarded". We will usually relocate them unless a nasty baby one.
I drove through the culp valley campground a while back and all the sites seem horrible. Tons of erosion and they all have extreme grades. Are there any sites worth visiting?
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ziphius Posts: 911
4/28/2013
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Nolan,
The snake was reared up on its own... luckily, it stayed that way for about a full minute for good photo ops!
Yes, I saw a couple of decent, flat sites at Culp, just drive around the circumference of the area a little. You've also got the option of parking at Culp and hiking in to more secluded spots, without much of a mileage / time investment.
Nolan (anutami) wrote:
Nice rattler, we are on our 3rd rattle snake sighting at our house !!! Usually the big daddy's are pretty docile. Did you provoke that one for a photo op? That is a great shot. I am bummed how rattlers have been given a bad wrap and are so easily "discarded". We will usually relocate them unless a nasty baby one.
I drove through the culp valley campground a while back and all the sites seem horrible. Tons of erosion and they all have extreme grades. Are there any sites worth visiting?
edited by ziphius on 4/28/2013
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