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Nice trip. Have started a few hikes from Old Hwy 80 and crossed under the tunnel toward Boulder Creek and Myers Creek but never checked out the island. Is that For Sale sign still up? Assumed it was the ranch to the west but never called the number. I hear there's a pile of cars that went off I-8 over by the ranch. Actually saw a PU fly off a few years ago. Didn't end well.

I stumbled on that cabin in 2005 heading out to Myers Valley. Stopped by last December and it looked about the same. If you have a copy of Chris Wray's "The Historic Backcountry," it has a blurb on this cabin and mentions another a little way down I-8, one I've never seen. It's listed as being at 32 40.39, -116 04.40. On Google Earth, looks like it's on a little rise near where a dirt road peels off the eastbound lanes.

They are not on the map. You can find a list of all the stations for each quad using the ngs website. (for some reason I cant link to the list generated or the data sheets) But follow the links on that site: Survey Marker Data Sheets> Data Sheets> USGS Quad> then enter In-Ko-Pah Gorge. Once you get to the list, you can select the station you want and tget the data sheet, which gives a writen description on how to locate the BM.

Oops! You're absolutely right. The other site is 32 41.42 -116 3.68

Here you go Daren
Seller is actually the author Chris Wray

I hear there's a pile of cars that went off I-8 over by the ranch. Actually saw a PU fly off a few years ago. Didn't end well.

Not to thread hijack but I have finally started using Caltopo. it is amazing! thanks for the tip Daren,

How do you do "D Stretch?" Is it available as a photoshop plugin?

Great pictures as always. How close were you to that rattler?

And of course the first of the dry falls. I was moving so slowly, takiing pictures, and had to take the time to pull all those cactus spines out with my Leatherman's pliers, I wasn't up for climbing the falls. Besides Schad says that it becomes less interesting above them. Or atleast that was my rationalization. I now have any excuse to go back again.

Daren, did you try to eat the fishhook cactus fruit? It is supposed to taste very good.
I have always wanted to try it

Great photos Daren! I'm impressed that you hiked the Inner Pasture / Moonlight Canyon to Agua Caliente at night. Especially during a new moon. A few spots with tricky footing along the way. 4 mylar balloons is a lot, what's your personal 'best'? - Jim

I was there last weekend. Took some pictures:
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjz7xNLU
One nice thing about using Flickr is the associated map with each picture. The geotag is usually correct, and it helps in pinpointing the location of the picture.
-Bill

Thank you for posting this!
facebook.com/FindGuillermoPinoJr

Wow. Just thought they were yet another piece of trash left by the careless. Will check out the link. Tom

My average number of baloons picked up per hike was zero---till I joined this forum. Now I scoop up every one I see thanks to you. Tom

Decided to head down to La Rumorosa (El Vallecito) site and see what he was talking about. The girlfriend and I made our way south through Mexicali and headed west on Hwy 2. If you enjoy the I-8 grade entering/leaving the Imperial Valley, La Rumorosa grade is that times 5. Here's a link to a 2 min video from yesterday while driving down the grade:

Before this thread started, I had been talking with my girlfriend about the balloon problem. We had both read the 'Floating Menace' link that Daren posted and thought of ways to reduce the number of balloons released into the wild. Besides outlawing helium, our main crazy idea was a form of eco-terrorism, involving popping the balloons in-store before they are sold. It would take a subtle method, such as a straight pin or a micro- blow-dart straw. Eventually, you would get caught. So, we're working on other ideas, such as education campaigns. My girlfriend thought of a "balloon deposit", where you return the balloon to the store to get your money back. But the deposit would have to be big enough (say $5) to motivate people to return them. If folks would just stop losing them to the sky...... any technology out there that could be inside the balloon so that when it reached a certain height, say 50 ft., it would "pop" on its own? That would at least keep a majority of the balloons in urban areas.

On an unrelated note, we were picking up trash at Coronado Beach last weekend and I came up with the idea of training corvids (crows, jays, ravens) to fly around and pick up trash and return items to a reward station for food pellets. They are very smart birds with great eyesight.

Agreed, those are awesome. How do you get Google to host content that large?

Nice Daren. I did not see your backpack by the truck though. Did you use a tripod for those pics?
David

Been trying to get the girlfriend out camping in the desert more and therefore will NEVER be showing her this post!

Kind of why I like the rooftop tent.

Like Daren says that is a fantastic remote area to explore. Our Inner Pasture Trip was with Daren , and I would like to do it again at some point.

Hey Daren, you mentioned hiking to a spring in Inner Pasture on your last trip, is it the one shown on the topo at 32.904 and 116.342? If so, was there water?

Search "Blythe Intaglios" on Google Earth and you can see them all from space. Tom

Couldn't tell you more about the ollas. Maybe Daren could since he's doing some curation work at the museum. Tom

How ironic the little story on the phone card you found in the middle of the desert is about the cliff divers of "La Quebrada" in Acapulco. Nice post. Would love to get out there some day.

Happened to have met one of the current owners of the Crawford Ranch earlier this year. When I asked about pictographs etc. in Inner Pasture, the owner hesitated a while and then suggested I try Blair Valley! Tom

When mylar balloons got caught in overhead power lines, the lines were overloaded, broke and fell on cars parked along Lincoln Avenue according to a utility spokesperson.

Apparently the owner didn't appreciate alien paparazzo and marched out yelling at me

looks like someone is up there with a big antenna on the back of their truck.

So what were you up to out in Canyon Sin Nombre on such a lovely warm day?

links: http://www.ranchocostanada.itgo.com/

Did you go see the Hidden Spring at the top of the hill near the tower?

Didn't get around to climbing up to the spring. Have climbed up to the top of the ridge and headed north to a nice Valley overlook but was a little cooler then.

Your golf ball might start a new forum theme along the lines of mylar balloons... what was your best golf ball day in ABDSP?

Daren;
Do these Iguana change color? I saw one before on pavement, and it was much darker.

No ruins at all of the shack?

That's exactly how my alleged "Rugged Trails" tires looked about 50 yards after I left the pavement for the first time. Blew one out after hitting a pebble driving up Painted Gorge for a night hike up Carrizo Mt and spent an hour cursing Toyota for putting them on their TRD equipped Tundras while I wrestled with the spare in the dirt. Happy happy with the BFG A/Ts all around. Tom

dsefcik wrote:

tommy750 wrote:

No ruins at all of the shack?

I didn't get far enough to really look, there are No Vehicles Allowed BLM Wilderness signs almost immediately after you get going. Of course that doesn't stop the Border Patrol. I asked the BP agents about it and they said they have seen the one down by the culvert but not anything going up into Myer Valley. I am going to hike in when I get a chance.

If we're talking about the second miner's shack down the eastbound lanes from the one near bolder creek, it maps on Google to the little plateau just yards up the dirt road from I-8. Just found the coordinates in an earlier post re your Island trip: 32 41.42 -116 3.68 Tom


Miner's Shack by tomteske, on Flickr

Good job getting to the end of Rockhouse in your truck. That is tough and requires some patience and skill. I am assuming you did it solo with no spotter either. By comparison when I did my Rockhouse trip this spring it took me about an hour in my jeep to get to the end of the road. I did not see anything like your truck back in there. The other full size rigs I saw were parked at the split with Butler Canyon. A long time ago I took my old Dodge up that road but it did not have 4 doors or an 8' bed.

David

I did not get that far, the BLM Wilderness signs are right after that first U bend in the road. While I cannot advocate for driving past those signs I doubt anybody is out there checking right now. I will just park and hike in when I have time. The BP said they have not seen any shacks there but they know about the other one.

tommy750 wrote:

dsefcik wrote:

tommy750 wrote:

No ruins at all of the shack?

I didn't get far enough to really look, there are No Vehicles Allowed BLM Wilderness signs almost immediately after you get going. Of course that doesn't stop the Border Patrol. I asked the BP agents about it and they said they have seen the one down by the culvert but not anything going up into Myer Valley. I am going to hike in when I get a chance.

If we're talking about the second miner's shack down the eastbound lanes from the one near bolder creek, it maps on Google to the little plateau just yards up the dirt road from I-8. Just found the coordinates in an earlier post re your Island trip: 32 41.42 -116 3.68 Tom


Miner's Shack by tomteske, on Flickr

Nice hiking trip. By the way, has anyone ever been to the Cougar Canyon Solstice Cave? Supposedly a solitary badly weathered pictograph will be illuminated in a few hours in a cave somewhere in Cougar Canyon and again in exactly six months. It's reportedly a "dual purpose" cave with a natural opening for the winter solstice and and artificial walled-in opening (severely damaged in a rock fall) for the summer event.

The Tenting Today was hilarious...I did not order it so you will have to let us know if the rest of the book is as funny as the webpage excerpt.

Wild you got the shooting star in there.

The power lines were converted to BW with a high contrast red filter just to give it a more omninous look

tommy750 wrote:

Apparently water drains off these luxurious patios (visible from outer space) and fill nearby cisterns. Little animals then have extra water. Daren, do these things really work?? Seems a little overkill to me. Tried to find "Post 376" but only located a Troop 376 in nearby Milwaukie, Oregon. Was going to lift the metal plate off the cistern and check out the water level but the heat kinda sapped my curiosity.

I did some work for BLM a few years back and they had me looking for those guzzlers all over Imperial county from the base of the Jacumba mountains, to the Chocolate mountains. I came across one in the Yuha Desert during May one year and it was quite full of water (along with a ton of sand at the bottom of the cistern) and had a lot of tracks around it. So the ones that are still in existence (some have been destroyed over the years) do work and are used by the wildlife.
That's an awesome pic of the power line! How'd you do it?

tommy750 wrote:

Apparently water drains off these luxurious patios (visible from outer space) and fill nearby cisterns. Little animals then have extra water. Daren, do these things really work?? Seems a little overkill to me. Tried to find "Post 376" but only located a Troop 376 in nearby Milwaukie, Oregon. Was going to lift the metal plate off the cistern and check out the water level but the heat kinda sapped my curiosity.

I did some work for BLM a few years back and they had me looking for those guzzlers all over Imperial county from the base of the Jacumba mountains, to the Chocolate mountains. I came across one in the Yuha Desert during May one year and it was quite full of water (along with a ton of sand at the bottom of the cistern) and had a lot of tracks around it. So the ones that are still in existence (some have been destroyed over the years) do work and are used by the wildlife.
That's an awesome pic of the power line! How'd you do it?

Saw a few of the white markers in between Squaw and the summit. Do you know if they marked some boundary?

Nice. How do you keep the cactus off Bone's paws? Last time I was out with my friend and her dog, we spent half the time pulling cholla barbs out of its paws. I see one of the jeep trails heads way NW and ends up overlooking Carrizo Gorge. Is that open? Looks like it would have a great view and maybe a nice jump off spot for gorge hiking.

Started following SDGE on twitter during the last big power outage. Interesting that they just sent this out.

Have a safe 4th of July. If you use Mylar balloons, tie them down, dispose properly & avoid outages: http://bit.ly/BMylarSafe Pls RT

Nice one Daren! (and correct on the ID). Congrats on contributing the first data point. You recall the month?

You mentioned bees. Have stumbled onto two hives in the last month if that's of interest. Tom

That IS a big truck. Did you airbrush out all the scratches?!

Well Daren, it looks like you photographed a 'Variegated Meadowhawk' (Sympetrum corruptum), either a female or immature. The kicker is, this species is highly migratory, often found in the desert southwest FAR from ANY water source. They are distributed far and wide over the western U.S. Hey, did the sheep count happen already? - Jim

Are there some palm grove areas that are off-limits to hikers during the summer, to avoid disturbing the sheep? Apparently, your spot wasn't one of them?

That is a great story and awesome you saw so many Bighorns.
Kind of wondering what the motivation was for the dad and son to be hiking out in Borrego when the temps were that high?

but would you mind commenting on determining the age, sex, etc of the bighorn sheep in your other photos? Thanks. Tom