Talk about a trip you took out to Anza Borrego
The Potrero / Vallecito Valley 3 nights
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ziphius Posts: 911
1/4/2015
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Alex and I spent three nights camping and hiking. Cold night temperatures in the low 30s. We were lucky to be there before the post-Christmas cold front arrived! Parked on Christmas morning and then hiked just over 8 miles to our camp area. Some minor rock scrambling and topo-checking to make sure we were taking an efficient route. Occasional rock ducks along the way. They tend to spoil the connection with the terrain, spoon-feed the hiker so to speak. Some folks consider them a safety feature, I think they turn your brain off to your surroundings and make you complacent. Credit to Alex for making me think more about the role of ducks/cairns in the backcountry. There is surface water and an oasis not more than 0.5 mile from the parking lot.
Views to the Lagunas on the hike in:
Everyone likes yuccas unless you have any distance to walk through and around them:
Still beats traffic on the I-805 heh?
Shadows of the Sawtooth Mountains in the morning. I need to hike up to the ridgeline one early morning to get a killer view of these sharp shadows reaching across the valley floor.
Yoni
Bees were thirsty. Scale is everything, I wish I could find that much water, relatively-speaking.
If you were in the shade any time of the day, you had to have your jacket on:
We (Alex) found a few antlers:
 
Pictographs
Obsidian spotted by Alex:
Alex also spotted a fox at this same location, managed to point it out to me, I managed to never see it, alas, no photos.
Dried flowers near the saddle between The Potrero and Canebrake:
View towards Lagunas from saddle
Views from the saddle between The Potrero and Canebrake, looking north.
Other random views:
This was a ‘mylar tribute’ to someone that had passed away. ‘Floating towards the heavens’ is the last pleasant memory desired I imagine. ‘Stuck in a desert cholla and stuffed into the dirty backpack of a stinky guy with a beard’ is my final memory. We lost count on retrieved mylars after 7 or 8:
Leaving the valley on our last day, HDR photo:
A very fresh and wet scat found next to a cholla bomb near Squaw Canyon and Marsh Trail on the last day:
edited by ziphius on 1/4/2015
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