The Overnight that Wasn't

Sunday, Gail and I headed off to Eastern San Diego County for an overnight backpack trip, sort of a fine tuning for the longer trips to come soon.

We chose the Caliente Wilderness area outside of Warner Springs because of its solitude and the fact that it had a camp destination with a running stream, supposedly into June in a normal year.  It also is on the Pacific Crest Trail which means the trail is well maintained.

The happy hikers starting out.

 The PCT climbs moderately around a  mountain into the Caliente Wilderness.

 After about four miles, Hot Springs Peak comes into view.  It is the highest peak in San Diego County at 6,512 feet.

 The area had been burned over and there were still ghost bushes and trees standing.

 No shortage of rocks!

 At about 5 miles, the terrain became very rocky and barren.

 This is one of the quietest areas left in California - even planes don't seem to fly over.

Down in those trees is the area suggested for camping.  The drought has really left an impact even though there was more rain this year.  Here is the description by Jerry Schad, author of Afoot and Afield.  "At a point east of peak 5412, you'll see below and to the east a grassy flat, dotted with Coulter pines and black oaks, along an upper tributary of Agua Caliente Creek.  This is a perfect place for a midday picnic and even better for an overnight stay.  Water trickles through here until about June after a normal wet season."

So we left the trail and headed down, looking forward to a lazy afternoon setting up camp and poking around.  We headed towards these rocks, it was our "super duck", which reminded us of Stonehenge.

Little Stonehenge

 This was what was in the stream, a San Diego Alligator Lizard, and not a drop of water.  We searched downstream and came up empty.  We did find a stash of big plastic water containers, two with water, probably enough for us to get by on.  However, when we touched them, the plastic disintegrated and all the water went swoosh, into the ground.

With little water left, not enough to cook our dehydrated food, we decided to head back to the trail and weigh our options.

On the way back were numerous deer tracks, and then these large mountain lion tracks.  Jerry, our neighbor, had told us, "Watch out for mountain lions."  I guess he was serious.

Mountain lion tracks.

To this point we met only one hiker, and he was coming the other way.  He, Bill, was excited to tell us that a couple miles or so ahead was Mike's place, where the trail crossed a dirt road.  Mike cooked up pancakes with blueberry syrup that morning, and would be serving pizza that night.  He said the place looked like, "Warner Springs on acid."  We hiked a couple miles further until we came over a ridge.  Looking down to where Mike's place might be, it looked like another couple miles at the least.  We decided we weren't into being part of a scene, and opted to hike back out and drive to an area we had seen running water at just about 3 weeks ago, hike in a little, and camp there.  So we began the 7 mile hike back out to the car.  Around 6:00 PM, we parked and hiked into the lower part of Agua Caliente Creek, and dang, there was no water there either.  We plopped to the ground, ate some snacks, hobbled back to the car, and drove home in the dark.  The trip was successful in that it taught us another lesson, and woke up our backpacking muscles big time.