Daren Sefcik

Carrizo Gorge hike to Egg Mtn - ABDSP

2012-02-07T05:19:00.000-08:00

Scotty "C" and I headed out to hike down the length of Carrizo Gorge from the DeAnza Springs Resort to Egg mountain. We have been down in the Gorge several times before and knew what to expect, catclaw, reeds, water and plenty of solitude. We hiked about 2 miles on the tracks from DeAnza and then dived down into the thick of the catclaw where there were old remains of railway cars. There were about 4 sets of wheels and axles, a small car chassis and other debris. Along the way we also found two encampments with more debris. It was about 12 miles thru the Gorge to get to the end of the jeep road and then about another 7 miles on sandy jeep road to egg mountain. We got to the jeep road just before dusk and hiked the remaining 7 miles to the truck in the dark under an almost full moon. It was a perfect night for hiking without lights and we managed to pull this trip off in 12 hours.

Photos from the trip can be seen here

Scott knows there is catclaw down in the Gorge so he prepared his pack with anti catclaw plastic wrap

This is where we decided to drop down into the Gorge, about 2 miles from DeAnza

Some old railway debris on the side of the Gorge

Down in the Gorge Scotty "C" straps on the catclaw armor

Nice water pond area

Busting thru some carrizo

Old mining debris

Cholla and cactus forest

Down in the Gorge near Goat Canyon, two years ago this was flowing with water

Looking up at the train trestles and the two old railway cars that have fallen over the side. You can't actually see the big famous trestle from down in the Gorge, you need to climb up to see it.

A 98 second exposure of the jeep road as we hiked out at night under an almost full moon

Some pictographs I have not seen before

Mandatory scat photo

GPS Track Log from Google Earth

Total mylar balloons for this trip - 1

This was a great trip and a tough 19 miles in about 12 hours, more photos from the trip can be seen here

Round Mountain

2012-01-26T07:01:00.000-08:00

How many times have I said to myself I would climb up Round Mountain on one of my trips out to ABDSP? Maybe a million? Well..I did this trip out...

View from Round Mountain.

I parked under the bridge and started the trek out on the railroad tracks before I cut over thru the thick brush

SDGE Sunrise Power Link project in action

Round Mtn is not super huge to climb

The register and DeAnza in the background

I guess we know who mostly summits this small peak

I am not sure what kind of bush this is but is has very bright, pretty yellow berries

The railroad tracks leading off into Carrizo Gorge

Scat DeJour

Some kind of old dam down in Carrizo Gorge

Down in the thick of Carrizo Gorge

Water drain pipe that crosses under the 8 freeway, I saw Border Patrol on foot patrolling this area, they told me they were looking for “clientele”.

Native Americans inhabited this area

A spiral

The Owl

This is a panorama photo from the top of Round Mtn. From left to right, Tule Mtn, DeAnza Springs Resort, Jacumba Peak, Gray Mtn and of course the 8 freeway running thu the middle of it all

Download Full size panorama here

McCain Valley Stars

2012-01-01T17:16:00.000-08:00

McCain Valley is a great place to view the stars, it has some very dark skies. I spent the night with my son this last week there and got to view more stars than I photographed...it was cold, very cold..

The moon and Venus

The moon, Venus and Fomalhaut(?) form a triangle. An airplane flew thru sky during the photograph

Cygnus, the Northern Cross, Vega is below. It seems centered in the Milky Way,

Starry Nights in Indian Valley - ABDSP

2011-12-23T12:01:00.000-08:00

I picked up an old used Minolta kit lens hoping to try and get better photos of the stars. It is a faster lens at f/1.7 but not very wide (50mm) but it definitly lets in more light and allows me to take shorter exposures and get more stars in the picture. My son also gave me an astronomy book he picked up at the thrift store, it is pretty good and I am still learning more about the stars.

Here is a shot of Orion and a close up of the nebula. I am amazed at what the camera can pick up. 50mm, ISO 1600, f/1.7, 5 seconds

Here are some star trails above a peak just north of False Sombrero, this lens really lets a lot of light in! 50mm, ISO 100, f/1.7, 34 minutes

Here is Mars above the Imperial Valley. 50mm, ISO 800, f/1.7, 10 seconds

Orions Belt. 280mm, ISO 12800, f/5.6, 3.2 seconds

Saturn (middle), Spica (up to right). 300mm, ISO 12800, f/5.6, 1/2 second

I don't have a telescope, this is my star gazing kit

Ghost Mountain Thanksgiving

2011-12-15T18:31:00.000-08:00

My son and I spent the Thanksgiving day exploring Little Blair valley and Ghost Mountain. We revisited the jet airplane wreckage and some Native American features he had not seen before. We also took a trip up to the Marshal South home site and hiked over to the top of Ghost Mountain. I was surprised how few people were camping in Little Blair for the holidays.

The Marshal South home site. The old cement pond and what is left of the house.

This is the "dump". I found many of the large mouth glass jars common to that era here and also many of the same down in Carrizo at the railroad camps.

This is the kiln the South's used to make their pottery. It looks much smaller than the drawings Marshall South submitted to the Desert Magazine articles.

My son reading the Ghost Mountain register. I had come up here back in June and the next register entry we saw was from November, no visitors for 4 months. You can see Granite mountain in the far off distance. It was a gorgeous day.

I saw this nice "Y" shaped cactus at the base of the mountain

Salton Sea

2011-12-01T20:14:00.001-08:00

The Salton Sea is a very interesting place rich in history geologically. Today it is home to many different types of wildlife, recreational visitors and year round residents who call it home. It is worth a visit if you have a chance.

Old Trees on the semi dry sea bed

Coyote prints leading off to Red Hill

The beginning of a mud pot

A more mature mud pot

A video of the mud pots

The beach at Obsidian Butte

Three large birds nests

An Osprey

Large boulder of obsidian

Starfish Cove Night Sky Stars

2011-11-27T17:20:00.001-08:00

A quick backpack trip to Starfish Cove with my son showed us a star filled night sky.

ISO 3200, Exposure 30 seconds, Aperture f4, Focal Length 10mm

ISO 12800, Exposure 15 seconds, Aperture f4, Focal Length 10mm

Same shot as above but 30 seconds exposure and only 800 ISO
ISO 800, Exposure 30 seconds, Aperture f4, Focal Length 10mm

Alma Wash is known for it's Elephant Trees

The Trailhead, check out the difference in what a zoom lens vs a wide angle lens will do with the distant landscape in this picture and the next one below.

My son ready to go

Number #9 on the trail, "the" Elephant Tree. There are many more Elephant trees in the canyon up on the ridges.

The entrance to Starfish Cove

My son found a dead lamb

Lots of Elephant trees up on the ridges

Multiple scat droppings in a single footprint

Mandatory scat with bones photograph

Canebrake Wash / Indian Valley - ABDSP

2011-11-09T17:55:00.000-08:00

A trip out to explore the ridge lines of Indian Valley was detoured by the rains and instead turned into a trip out into Canebrake Wash. When I drove into Indian Valley the weather was great. I drove out to the end of the north fork and was going to camp there but the bees were numerous and after about 30 minutes I found myself doing nothing but swatting bees away from me and the inside of my truck so I decided to go back down the road a bit to a nice little sandy area that was bee free. During the night the clouds started rolling in and so did the wind. My truck was rocking like crazy from the wind, it can get really, really windy in Indian Valley. The morning showed me nothing but dark rain clouds hovering above False Sombrero so I decided to go out into Canebrake Wash and explore there instead. Canebrake and Inner Pasture is really just amazing place, it is vast and empty, I am becoming fond of hiking there.

A possible yoni rock carving in Indian Valley

Mr. Taratula in Canebrake

Agave plant scat..yumm

Large sand berm in Canebrake (click to enlarge)

The Crawford Ranch

Looking west-north from the sand berm, wow...it is just amazingly vast here..that is Red Top in the distance. You can see the rain clouds moving in.

Looking North into Inner Pasture towards Moonlight Canyon...it is far away.

Morteros near some rock shelters indicate Native American habitation

Why do they always crap in the morteros???

Close up showing the hair and bones in the scat

One of the larger rock shelters I found (click to enlarge)

View north-west from the shelter (click to enlarge)

Another smaller rock shelter, little remained

More possible Yoni rock carvings back in Indian Valley

Leaving Indian Gorge a nice rainbow stretched across the road. It was short lived though as the rain was following me and would soon start raining hard.

Total Mylar balloon count for a 7 mile hike - 6

Wildlife of the week

2011-10-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

I am still unable to identify the different hawks I encounter. This hawk has been flying around my backyard since spring, I believe he might be a juvenile Cooper Hawk..but I could be completely wrong. He loves to scree-scree all morning as the sun comes up and flies around the canyon near my house. He routinely has sky battles with the crows. These photos were taken on a misty, cloudy and drizzly morning. He was bathing himself in the drizzle in a tree in my backyard. The photos were difficult, the backlight was really bright compared to the shadows of the tree branches. He was about 40'-50' up the hill and I used a 300mm lens to photograph him, the photos are slightly cropped.

Carrizo Gorge Railway Goat Canyon Trestle - ABDSP

2011-10-12T22:32:00.000-07:00

On my way home from hiking Whale Peak and exploring Inner Pasture I stopped off in Jacumba to meet up with some friends to ride out to the Goat Canyon Trestle in Carrizo Gorge. Let me say this was by far the easiest way I have traveled to to see the trestle.

I had a flat on my MTB and Scotty "C" promised to fix it when I got there, he totally lived up to his promise..thanks Scotty!

Really..??

Our first wood plank crossing

Scotty C heads off into a tunnel. Riding thru the tunnels was a blast, especially the really long ones

This train is now becoming famous the longer it sits out there

The funky aqua/turquoise colors of the interior are so cool

Possibly one of my favorite window stickers yet

Tried out some of the B/W filters for the camera

Scott and Greg immediately saw what was wrong with the train, somebody had wedged a piece of wood under the wheels

Canadian Car & Foundry (Can-Car) manufactured these railway cars

There was a lot of debris left near an abandoned tunnel

This was an abandoned tunnel that looked caved in several hundred yards into it

No idea what this is

ta'da..! the Goat Canyon Trestle

Riding the steel side grates was sketchy

Inner Pasture - ABDSP

2011-10-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

The next morning following my Whale Peak Hike I hiked to Inner Pasture for some exploring. There is no easy way out to Inner Pasture, you are almost guaranteed a minimum of 6 miles round trip just to get to the edge of the valley. My trip was about 14 miles total, I could have done close to 20 miles if I had left earlier but I got a late start.

You can see all of the pictures from the trip here http://www.darensefcik.com/Photography/Anza-Borrego-Desert-State-Park/Inner-Pasture-10-08-2011/19490183_7TtrGM

Inner Pasture is raw and vast, if you decide to go explore Inner Pasture be sure not to follow my actions and go with a few people if possible. The undocumented travelers in Inner Pasture is obvious and active, hiking solo out there is not recommended.

Cool Dragonfly

Morteros and Pottery around this rock shelter suggest it was used by Native Americans

There was also evidence of undocumented travelers in this shelter and others nearby.

Pottery sherds and what appeared to be a possible projectile made from stone

Lots of morteros nearby

Yoni rock carvings are always a favorite to find

Inner Pasture was once home to cattle who grazed the open valley. You can still find evidence of them today

Here is a close up of the steer teeth just in case you wondered what they looked like

Here is a close up of the horn

I also stumbled across a small shelter with a really funky pictograph, not really sure what it is supposed to be.

Here is an enhanced version with DStretch

This is with my hand in front as a reference for size

This the alcove wall I found it in, look in the lower right

Here is my mandatory scat inside of a mortero photo

Total mylar balloon count for this trip - 5

Whale Peak via Bisnaga Wash - ABDSP

2011-10-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to hiking up to Whale Peak. I planned a route up from Bisnaga Wash almost one year ago and never went. I would not recommend this route for anyone who just wants to summit Whale Peak, I would suggest one of the more popular routes up from Blair Valley or Pinyon Mtn. It took me most of the day to hike it but in the end it was worth it.

See all the pictures from the trip here http://www.darensefcik.com/Photography/Anza-Borrego-Desert-State-Park/Whale-Peak-10-07-2011/19490750_TmpnG6

Here is a Google Earth image of the actual route recorded by my GPS

This is the route going up just after getting out of the wash. Whale Peak is way off in the distance about 5 miles away

This was a steep wash ravine Google Earth didn't show me

Yours truly

Started finding pottery going up

More "trail"

Got to walk in a small sandy wash for awhile, lots of animal tracks

There was some more pottery and a small milling feature along the way

It was at this steep climb near the top I almost convinced myself to turn around and go back to my truck where there was cold beer waiting

I pressed on and found this cool old Juniper tree at the top of the ridge line

I still had two valleys like this to cross to get to the top of Whale Peak, that would still be another 1.5 miles or so.

At the top of Whale Peak looking west towards the Laguna Mountains and Vallecito Valley below

On the east side of the peak you can see the Salton Sea

There is a rock shelter that guards the hikers register. There were many great places to camp overnight at the top.

The register. This is a popular peak with entries every few days.

Wildlife of the week

2011-10-06T05:11:00.000-07:00

Nothing fancy here, just some bird photos at Dog Beach in Ocean Beach California. I usually don't take my camera with me to the beach but decided to this last weekend. It is hard to get close up photos of birds when your dog is running around everywhere.

Snowy Egret

Our always beloved crow, he has some kind of fruit pit. He was very protective of this seed/pit

This little bird made lovely singing bird song sounds, I am not sure what kind of bird it is

Water Drops

2011-10-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Following up with my original Water Drop post I remembered I had some more water drop photos I could post.

Here are some water drop photos with regular and Easter themed M&M's. I created the stage for them by placing M&M's in a wine glass and then used a piece of glass from a picture frame on top of the wine glass. I then used the end of fork to place small drops of water on the picture frame glass. They needed to be really small and getting the lighting just right was time consuming. I achieved perfect lighting by moving the glass around in front of my sliding glass door.

Here are some interesting drops on leaves after an early morning rain. I liked them because of the refraction of the landscape you see in them.

The House Forgotten - ABDSP

2011-09-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

In the 1945 July Desert Refuge article written by Marshal South he describes an old Indian rock shelter they discovered on one of their many exploration trips out into the desert area. In the Marshal South Book, the oldest son Rider South also recalls his father referring to it as "The Fortress" since it appeared to have many smaller shelters built up all around the main shelter providing what appeared to be a protected fortress.

On a recent hiking/exploration trip out into the open desert over the centuries old sun baked volcanic rocks I stumbled across this very shelter. I was not aware at the time what I had found but later a person with more knowledge about the area and the Marshal South history pointed it out to me. I later went back and read the article by Marshal South published almost 66 years ago and was amazed to see the resemblance of the rock shelter and how a few of the plants sketched by Marshal South were still growing in the same spot I had photographed.

Here is the sketch Marshal South drew in the 1945 article

Here is the photograph I took in July 2011

Replace a failing drive in a ZFS Zpool

2011-09-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

I had a hard drive start throwing some sense key errors on one of our big Sun servers at work today. Besides dealing with problems from a major power outage in Southern California recently this was just one more thing to deal with. Good news is it was part of a ZFS zpool and after some refreshing of the commands I needed to use I was able to replace the drive in a matter of minutes and there was no downtime for any of the users on the system. We have about 1,000 zfs file systems on this particular zpool, mostly all being very active user home directories. It is also a print server for about 1,000 users.

ZFS is amazing.

If you need to replace a failing drive in a ZFS zpool, maybe seeing what I needed to do will help you. Follow along to see what was needed.

Here you can see the sense key errors in the messages file

Running the zpool status command shows me only a single read error. This is enough for me to swap out the drive, this would be the c1t5d0 device.

The Sun server has many drives in it and I wanted to make sure I pull the correct drive out so I use the luxadm command to flash the amber light next to the drive in the system. These are fiber channel drives so luxadm is used. Next I tell the zpool system to take the drive offline so I can hot swap it out of the system. I run the the zpool status command to verify the drive is offline. Now I need to run to the data center, find the flashing light on the disk drive cage and swap it out with a new one.

Once the drive is replaced I run the devfsadm -C command to tell the OS to scan the system and add the new drive so it is usable to the zpool system. Now tell zpool to replace the failing drive with the new one. Since I was doing a direct replacement from the same slot in the system the command was very simple, "zpool replace zdata c1t5d0", "zdata" being the name of the zpool itself. Now running the zpool status command you can see it has already begun to rebuild the new drive back into the zpool volume.

With just a few simple commands I was able to hot swap and replace a failing disk drive in a very busy Sun server with no downtime at all. ZFS is an amazing piece of technology.

I hope this post might be helpful for you if you need to replace a failing hard drive using ZFS.

Grapevine Mountain / Bitter Creek Canyon - ABDSP

2011-09-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

I started looking thru some of my Jerry Schad books for some ideas to go hiking in Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Jerry Schad is unfortunately not doing to well these days and I know many of us wish him the best and are so thankful to him for his books that we have used for many years. I myself have the original 1987 copy that I still use.

Finding somewhere to hike in Anza Borrego is never a problem, instead the problem is just trying to make up your mind where! I settled on hiking up to the peak of Grapevine Mountain using Jerry's route as described in his book. I drove down Grapevine Canyon from the Ranchita area the day before and camped out at the starting area of the hiking route. The full hiking distance was about 6.3 miles and the elevation gain/loss was around '2500. This was a great hike that only took about 7 hours to complete and that includes 95 degree temps and lots of lolly gagging on my part. I would recommend a hike up thru Bitter Creek Canyon alone as I found it a fascinating area.

You can see all of my pictures from this trip and many others on my photo webiste

Google Earth map of my actual route as recorded by GPS
Stuart Spring had plenty of water and bees guarding it
It had rained heavily early in the day, the dirt roads were muddy and the morteros near Angelina Spring were filled with water
The first dry fall heading up to Grapevine mtn. Jerry Schad's book recommends bypassing it on either the left or right but I was able to easily go right up the middle
This is looking up at the saddle as described in Jerry Schad's book. The white dot just above the saddle is the moon
Grapevine Mtn peak way off in the distance, behind and just to the right of the peak at about 10'oclock in the photo
Sorry, I am a sucker for scat..
Grapevine Mtn peak straight ahead, not much trail to follow on this hike
I love the blue Juniper Berries in this scat
The register, this peak does not seem to have much activity as almost all of the entires are months apart. The last one before mine was March 18th, seven months ago. If you look at the entry in the jar you can see it is from park ranger Robert Theriault dated 1985. I tried to find an entry from Jerry Schad but did not see one on any of the sheets. I did see many entries from the Monday Maniacs over the years, they seem to like this peak
What's left of old survey markers
Looking west at the Volcan Mountains
Looking down at the ridge I would descend. The ridge starts in the lower left of the picture and goes generally west down towards the center of the picture. This is the steep descent Jerry Schad decribes in his book for this hike
Where I first dropped down into Bitter Creek Canyon. You can clearly see an animal path thru the grass
Here is an open sandy area thru the canyon
Bitter Creek Canyon was very interesting, there were many rocky areas and some wide open sandy areas
Honey comb up in a small rock shelter. The honey comb looked old and abandoned but when I climbed up to get a picture bees started flying out
This old bathtub is at the bottom of Bitter creek Spring. You can see old pipes going up to the spring from here
Bitter Creek Spring is right at the base of this palm tree. I poked my head in there and only saw moist ground with a lot of bees
This was an interesting piece of pottery I found in the creek. I thought it might have a pattern drawn on it in black but after closer examination of the photo at home with Dstretch I think it is just from age
My little field mouse friend
Anybody ever notice these petroglyphs driving thru Ocotillo? Not much patina, fake is my guess

Why do they always crap right in the morteros??

Indian Hill 08-2011 - ABDSP

2011-08-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Indian Hill is an amazing place, not just because of the cool rock art in the Blue Sun rock shelter but also because of the natural rock formations and history of the area. It really is an amazing beautiful place to explore. Here are some pictures from several visits during August 2011.

View of Indian Hill from the Railway Camp

Yoni Rock Art

Somebody had a big imagination

Old Railway Camp Relics still out there

Carrizo Gorge Railway section

Huhhh?..a pile of coconuts out in the desert??

No..silly..that is just a pile of deer scat..

Cool rock formations from the wind and water

The Blue Sun Cave in all it's glory

Some of the faded areas of the cave brought to life via Dstretch

Another rock shelter nearby with some rock art still in tact

Old artifacts in the area, please do not take home!

The massive amounts of scat in the area gave me pause to continue exploring

Wow..lots of free time I guess...

Sunrise in Mortero Wash - ABDSP

2011-08-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Cool Canyon / Rainbow Canyon - ABDSP

2011-08-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

Two of the lesser known and least visited canyons in Anza Borrego Desert State Park are Cool Canyon and Rainbow Canyon. This last weekend I visited both. These canyons are semi slot canyons and reminded me a lot of canyons in Death Valley in that they narrow up and have lots of marbled, swirled types of rock. You can use Cool Canyon as a starting point to climb Granite Mountain, I made a last minute decision to try and get to the top but I stopped at Peak 4624, I just wasn't prepared to go another 1,000' that day.

Rainbow Canyon is another great little canyon that is only a mile or so long and great for a quick hike or family exploration opportunity. If you are camping in Blair Valley and have someone who can drop you off at the canyon mouth you can hike in and over to Blair Valley for about a 5 mile easy going but fun hike.

You can see all of the pictures from Cool Cool Canyon here and Rainbow Canyon here

Here is the entrance to Cool Canyon

Morteros nearby indicate past Indian occupation in the area

Some quality scat entering the canyon

This appears to be a Hawk Massacre

One of many dry falls in the canyon

Another larger dry fall

Some Honeycomb up in the rocks, this was a great find

My lunch on Peak 4624, you can see Whale Peak straight ahead in the distance

Looking back at Peak 4624 as I descended

After Cool Canyon I headed over to Rainbow Canyon for a quick couple of hours

Here is the entrance to Rainbow Canyon

You will almost immediately see the first dry fall, there are many and they are all fun to climb and easy to get over unless you decide to wear Stilettos on your desert hike...

Lots of marbled rock in this canyon

Approaching another dry fall

Looking up thru a section of the canyon

Kitty Kat scat

Looking east towards Blair Valley at the saddle area

Here is a narrow section of the canyon

This is looking down probably the largest dry fall, it is actually a "double" dry fall

Download a panorama of Earthquake Valley from Peak 4624 here

Both of the canyons are great for a quick 2 mile hike and are family and kid friendly

Wildlife of the week

2011-08-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

These photos are all from Cuyamaca Rancho State Park near the Dead Horse Trail

Red Tail Hawk

Immature Turkey Vulture showing off the classic vulture "V" wing shape

Immature Turkey Vulture soaring over an open field while hunting for food. The immature vultures have the grey/black color on the head while adults have a red colored head

Some kind of scary looking fly

Wildlife of the week

2011-08-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Anza Borrego Desert State Park area, spotted this Bobcat watching me while I was eating some lunch during a hike out in a remote canyon

Male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park near the Sweetwater River

Eagle Fire / Vallecito Hike - ABDSP

2011-07-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

************ Update Aug 1st 2011 ************
According to CAL FIRE the Eagle fire is now 100% contained
*********************************************

The Eagle fire has burned more than 14,000 acres and spread into the Anza Borrego Desert State park canyons. On a recent trip to the desert I photographed some of the helicopters making water drops on the blaze. They were filling up from the Borrego Community water ponds. It was very interesting to watch, they were flying circles around Indinan Head Peak dropping water onto the fires in Palm Canyon and Henderson Canyon. They were moving very quickly, these guys were really good and busting some serious ass fighting the fire. It was amazing to watch.

You can see more photos of the helicopters in action and a few videos here

This is one video of a helicopter coming in to pickup water

This is the SDG&E SPL Tower helicopter helping out

Two helicopters fill up at once, looked a little sketchy to me but I guess they know what they are doing

Sky Art sculptures near Henderson Canyon, you can see the smoke from the blaze in the background and the many trucks from the fire crew on stand by

On a hike out thru a very remote area of Vallecito I found a few pictographs, pottery sherds, morteros and a Bobcat watching me from up in a small cave. I also had a couple of coyotes dart out away from me while boulder hopping in a few areas. As usual for that area I saw a lot of large mountain lion scat.

You can see all of the pictures from Vallecito here

This Bobcat was watching me while I ate some lunch, this was in a very remote area of Vallecito

This was a very interesting rock, it has the looks of possible carvings but is most likely a natural formation

I saw several large scats that looked like Century Plant pods and seeds

These were pretty cool looking morteros

I was not sure what to make of these prints. I followed them for about a mile thru a wash until I had to turn onto the road. They were large, roundish and deep. Almost like a basketball was thrown down into the sand, my sunglasses are next to them for size comparison and you can see my foot prints to the left, very faint so you know these were made by something heavy footed.

A nice size mountain lion scat

I found some interesting pictographs. Here are a couple with the originals and then with a Dstretch enhancement

Sombrero Peak 07-11-2011 - ABDSP

2011-07-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

Sombrero Peak is an iconic peak when you enter Anza Borrego Desert State Park from the south. It is visible from the S2 highway from Ocotillo until you pass the Bow Willow campground. There are a few different routes up to the peak, the two most popular being the shorter approach from Indian Valley and and the longer less steep approach from McCain Valley. Neither approach is easy and you will need some cross country navigation skills to get there. The views from the peak are incredible, you will get 360 degree views of the entire Anza Borrego desert and also of the McCain and Imperial Valleys.

You can download a Google Earth KML file of my trip here.

You will need to plan your own route and be confident in your route navigation skills before heading out to the peak, my GPS tracks alone will not get you there and back.

This trip was mostly to capture panoramic images of the desert from the peak. I had my camera packed away knowing I would make better time if I wasn't stopping every second to take pictures. As a consequence I missed several good wildlife shots. I saw a large coyote, a fox, a 4' rattlesnake, several Turkey Vultures, two large Red Tail Hawks and countless smaller birds.

There are always the intriguing rock formations in McCain Valley that can take whatever shapes your mind can think of, mostly faces for me.

Here is "Boulder Man" East and West side views

You can follow mostly old jeep trails up to the last 1.7 miles to the peak, after that you will need to use your navigation skills and maps to the peak.

1.7 miles to the peak from here, not much trail after this

If you look close enough you can find pottery sherds along the way (please don't take home)

You can see the Jacumba Mtn Peak and the Goat Canyon Trestle from Sombrero Peak

The panoramic views are awesome from the peak. Here are a few panorama images you can check out.

Panorama from Sombrero Peak looking north-east-south-west. This is a very interesting panorama, you will need to download and zoom in 100% and pan around. You can see so much from here, including the Goat Canyon train trestle. This was shot at 75mm focal length.

Click here to download (28MB)

Here is a panorama at 300mm focal length mostly south from Tule Mtn to the west of McCain Valley

Click here to download (24MB)

Panorama of Ocotillo from Sombrero Peak

Click here to download (5MB)

Bighorn Sheep Count 2011 - ABDSP

2011-07-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

This was my first year participating in the Bighorn Sheep count for the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. We were required to attend a half day orientation on learning about Bighorn and how to distinguish sex and age. It was very helpful but for a first time counter I had a hard time determining all of those different factors quickly while watching the sheep graze and disappear down into the watering hole areas. My counting partner and I counted a total of 18 unique sheep over the three day event. Mostly it was one large herd that showed up every day. We were about 800-1000' up on a ridge so observing and counting them was difficult without high powered optics. My camera was limited in power so most of the below images are cropped heavily to zoom in.

All of the pictures from the trip are here

Here are a few pictures from the trip. I spent three nights at Culp Valley and one night at Blair Valley.

A Ram, a yearling and an Ewe it looks like. There is actually a forth sheep behind the Ram

Blue or Black collar sheep in the middle on this photo

An older Ram and possible a younger Ram pop up out of nowhere at the west end of the canyon around 12pm on the second day

Seven sheep, one big Ram and the red collar again

13 sheep in this picture. There is at least one older Ram and one younger Ram. Also a Yellow and possible Beige collar. You will need to download and zoom in to find all 13 sheep

Here is the view of the Palms from our count site. You can see how far away we were. High powered optics allowed us to view the Bighorn but my camera suffered at 300mm.

Taking advantage of the new moon on the July 4th weekend I tried once again to take some star pictures. I had some slightly better results but still have plenty of room to learn and improve on taking night pictures.

Polaris Star Trails

Ursa Major - AKA, The Big Dipper hung low in the night sky at 1am

Milky Way **I think**

Great camouflage helps this grasshopper stay hidden in the boulders

Some Mule Deer in Shelter Valley

There were two mother deer and their fawns following close behind

Close up of one of the fawns

Sunset over Granite Mtn in Blair Valley

Banded Rock Lizard in Blair Valley

This little Antelope Squirrel was eating the fruit from a cactus ball, amazing how he handles the cactus and the thorns!

More photos of the Bighorn and other areas of Anza Borrego can be see here