The trail climbs through a small in canyon, the dry floor covered with scrub-brush, a sandy wash, and plenty of beige, brown and tan boulders. With the morning sun still low enough in the sky, a the canyon walls still cast a few welcome patches of shade along the trail. Even after only a mile of hiking I became so accustomed to the parched setting the my first glimpse of the oasis came as quite a shock. A dense stand of fan palms perched on the slope of the canyon. I can only imagine what the explorers a travelers of past thought after crossing a hundred miles of desert.
Full Screen Version
As I got closer to the oasis, I encounter a group of volunteers set-up across the trail, part of a annual Bighorn Sheep census project. They shared the shade of their tent and pointed out some sheep on the hill. It took me awhile, but I eventually saw one, though they said there were at least three.
The oasis was quite a site. Through center of the valley a weak stream trickled through the soil and tumbled between gaps in the boulders. All sorts of plants a grass grew along the stream. To one side stood a stand of 20-30 fan palms, the trunks still encased in the fronds from prior years housing all sorts of critters. I climbed a short distance passed the oasis to a huge boulder raising twenty feet above the ground, a great place to survey the oasis and everything beyond it.
I returned along a slightly different route that coursed higher on the canyon slope that he main trail that tracks through the wash. The views of Borrego Valley were grand. By the time I got back to the car (11:45) the temperature had climbed to 102 degrees.
Trip Statistics
Length: 3.7 miles
Time: 2 hours 21 minutes
Elevation Change: 507 feet
Total Climbing: 1,184 feet
Max. Elevation: 1,343 feet
No comments:
Post a Comment