Trip Report 20151010-11
The photos below are
what we saw.
In
preparation for this trip, I added a new hood ornament to
Thor. I purchased the yak skull at Wasteland Weekend for
$75 and then spent 3 days repairing and stabilizing the skull
for mounting on the truck. Most of the teeth were loose
and would not withstand a good, hard off-road thrashing that we
seem so prone to do, so I epoxied them in for good.
Additionally, I added some glue to most of the cranial sutures
just for good measure.
Our
meet-up point was the Rancho Bernardo Courtyard which used to be
the home of Musicmatch before the sale to Yahoo in 2004. I
had forgotten how nice the facility is, truly one of a kind.
The
interior courtyard is beautiful, complete with a nice fountain.
We
decided to split the group into the soft-core and the
hard-core. The soft-core would go directly to the campsite
in Sandstone Canyon via the easiest route. The hard-core
group would come in from the south via Vallecito Wash and the
Fish Creek Drop-off (AKA Diablo Drop-off because of the access
through Arroyo Seco del Diablo). We met up with our
portion of the group at the marker on SR78.
From the
marker, the Pacific Coast Trail is visible on the far hillside
as a diagonal trace.
We
traveled south of S2 to Vallecito Wash and then turned east to
Arroyo Seco del Diablo. We turned north into Seco and then
followed the wash through the mud hills.
The
walls got steeper as we went upstream.
Beer
o'clock rapidly came, so the interrupt needed to be handled.
One of the
hazards of narrow canyons is the chance of a collapse of the
cliff walls. If the spall is large enough, the trail can
be easily blocked. This was a large spall during the
recent rains, but it was not large enough to block the trail.
The
combination of sandstone and mudstone produced interesting
patterns. Notice the erosion that looks like a hot candle
dripping wax.
This area has been
faulted and folded and the tilted strata provided interesting
patterns.
At the
crest of the Diablo drop-off we had a great view of the
badlands.
The far
hills have valuable mineral deposits, in this case,
gypsum. The drop-off starts on the far side of the fence.
The mud
palisades in upper Fish Creek were visible from the overlook.
The group
heads down the upper portion of the dropoff. The high
crown due to the ruts caused most of the vehicles to scrape
their undercarriage.
Everyone
got down with only a light scraping.
The
lower portion of the dropoff will require some careful tire placement.
The
lower dropoff is quite steep.
This SUV
turned out to be quite capable.
We all made it down
the lower dropoff unscathed.
The exit from the
dropoff passes through a tight canyon that has a significant
obstacle that required some road building to pass without
damage.
Note the size of the
rocks compared to the tires.
It was easy for the FJ
Cruiser.
The jeeps had no
issues after the rocks were stacked.
Easy as 3.1415926....
This little berm will
inflict some damage from the grey SUV. Some speed was
required to get over the berm resulting in an impact with a
large rock at the top.
Interesting bedding
in the sandstone walls.
The crew was wounded
in action and generally damaged goods in the morning.
Pam was nice enough
to make coffee.
One of the guys had
a run-in with the fire pot the night before and got
burned. Ouch.
Almost
everyone had a great time but pain has a way of spoiling
fun. Fortunately, despite being burned, the victim should
fully recover. The balance of the crew that avoided the
worst tomfoolery only suffered from the alcohol therapy the
night before. But even that can be unpleasant.
It was a
hoot getting together with the crew; we had a great time.
Thanks and kudos to Dave for setting this up.
Copyright Bill Caid 2015. All rights reserved.