Red Scarp

Last night I made plans to go back to Red Ridge and hike down into Boulder Creek via the sluice between the minor and big ridges. When I woke up, though, I'd lost my zeal for a hike and decided to stay home and read. Maybe in the afternoon I'd drive over to Viejas mountain and try running up the trail. I had my coffee and what was left of the baguette from last night. During this interval I could feel a rising excitement urging me to act. I wasn't thinking about the book I'd be reading; I was imaging a hike. Dry, rocky slopes; soft, powdery ground; dust bursting from breaking branches, or shaken from old leaves; sunshine and heat. The images hung before my eyes. I could be doing that. I looked at the clock. It was about 8 am. Ten minutes later I was on the road. There was already a fair bit of traffic on hwy 8. About a mile from SDSU everything ground to a halt. All lanes were barely moving. After crawling for fifteen minutes the traffic magically started again. No signs of an accident that I could see. As I neared the 67 exit to Descanso the right lane, including the off-ramp, was closed and men were out sealing cracks in the concrete. I was forced to continue east. Luckily, I knew that there were several dirt tracks that connected the east and west bound lanes; I cut across the second of these and a minute later was back on track for Descanso.

When I parked at the cattle bar it was nearly 10 am. I got my things together and hit the trail. There were no other cars. Except for some deer tracks, the trail was pristine - no human prints. I descended into Johnson Creek and followed the deer trail up to the regular spot in a short time. From there I followed the same route I'd taken on my previous hike, that is, south along the edge of the slope where the ground is grassy or exposed rock. I passed the National Forest signs, and then hiked up. Though there is no trail, the way was familiar, and I came out at the spot where I'd placed a cairn the previous hike. A few minutes later I was at the top of the sluice and started hiking down it. Occasionally I startled a lizard or two, which darted off along the sides of the boulders. I didn't think about it at the time; if it was warm enough for lizards then it was probably warm enough for snakes. Gradually the foliage along the sluice became denser. I stepped into a thicket of Whitethorn and let out a bark of pain, twisting back. A thorn had driven itself through my canvas shorts and into my posterior. After a moment to collect myself I turned back to the bushes. I noticed the Whitethorn had a slight blue tinge. On a nearby branch I could see the tiny fist of a dark blue bud, and wandering around it was an even tinnier black and orange bug tapping the tightly furled blossom with its palps like an early morning shopper impatiently knocking on a store's locked door. I shimmied around the thorns and climbed up onto the ridge of rock to my right, bypassing the thickening brake for the moment. Shortly I neared the end of the minor ridge and crossed over the sluice. This location was somewhat further down, further south, than the spot I had crossed at previously. From there I began descending the slope while it turned gradually eastward, which is to say to my left.

I hadn't gone far when I came upon a barbed wire fence, running east and west, across my path. The fence was old and rusty but it wasn't falling apart. My map clearly shows that the area I was in - the slope, Boulder Creek below, and the other side - is part of Cleveland National Forest. There is also a mining claim, itself located on CNF land, about a quarter mile to the west of where I was standing, along Boulder Creek. Maybe having a claim gives the owner the right to fence off a stipulated surrounding area; it seemed possible, though ham-handed in this case since the slope was far from the claim. Possibly the fence was just a relic.

At that moment I became aware of a droning sound. I was standing on a large sunken boulder facing south; the droning was to my right. Near the foot of Mineral Hill a helicopter was hovering around a wooden power pole. The blue helicopter, a police helicopter, appeared to be interested in something near the pole or around the access road that ran beside it. I sat down on the boulder and watched. After ten minutes the helicopter reluctantly backed away, turned, and flew off north. I was none the wiser and didn't see or hear it again. I turned my gaze back to the fence and decided to follow it to the east in hopes that it would turn south or disappear or fall apart, in which case I could descend to the creek below with confidence. Eventually it did disappear, but by this time I was in sight of the scarp of red boulders I had seen on my last visit, the boulders that I call this ridge after. Today I was lower down on the slope and had made good time, despite getting on the trail later, so I decided to make for the red scarp rather than hike down into the creek.

Between me and the outcrop lay a shallow but fairly wide ravine. Because the slope here is steep and south facing, the ground is fairly arid and, except for the heart of the ravine, free of vegetation. However, the slope was strewn with tumbled rock. Some of this consisted of well-seated boulders, but much of it was large, thin shards of granite that hung on the loose slope, often held in place only by a jumble of small stones. I stayed well away from these in order not to dislodge them, going up and around or down and around whenever I was near one. As I was crossing the low point of the ravine, a startled bird burst from a clump of laurel sumac above me and sailed down the slope, wings back like the poles of a downhill skier. It was large, though not as large as a hawk, yellowish tan, and had a sharp beak. Perhaps it was a woodpecker, though it seemed too big for that. I turned quickly to watch the bird glide down the ravine, and as I did I heard a slow metallic tapping sound from a few feet off behind me. When I turned back, though, the sound had stopped and there was nothing to see.

On the far side of the ravine I started making my way up toward the scarp. In fact it was a cluster of very large boulders and between them were large gaps and chutes. While these spaces looked like they were the result of the boulder rolling up against each other, I think they were formed by the granite flaking away due to weathering. As I was clambering up, two things caught my attention. First, to my right buried in the growth of a laurel sumac I spied a plastic water bottle. It could have been left by another adventurer like myself, but I believe that it had been washed down from above. Second, as I looked over my left shoulder at a flat boulder next to me I saw that it had red streaks down the front, as if paint had dripped down from the top. My first thought was that these were intrusions. But I found the same sort of drips on many rocks from then on, and they were always in the direction of the ground. The red color could be due to iron, though some other mineral seems possible, considering the mining claims nearby. I'm still not sure about the mechanism though - does the red mineral get leached out of the rock in the rain?

Atop the crag I had a clear view of the facing slope of Middle Peak. I took some photos and continued east to the next ridge where, again, I took photos. It was time to start back. It had been warm and sunny for most of the hike, but the sun was now behind some high clouds and there was a moderately strong wind. If you look at the ridge from the south on a map, it is slightly bowed and looks a little like Scandinavia; Norway is the minor ridge, Denmark is the meadow I had planned to hike down to, Sweden is the major ridge, and Finland ... well, the analogy only goes so far. Anyway, I was standing in Skåne, at the southern tip of Sweden. The layer of rock I was standing on was at about the midline of the ridge, and about midway down to Boulder Creek. When I looked up from there, everything above me was green. I felt a tinge of panic.

As I began picking my way up the slope, I caught sight of a wooden picket sticking up in the air at an angle. It had been bound to a steel fence post and was pointing to a benchmark. There was no name but it was dated '67. It wasn't marking a high point but indicated the intersection of four quadrants: S2, S1, S11, and S12. My map shows exactly these quadrants, and the location of their intersection corresponds precisely with where I found the benchmark. The benchmark gave me some hope that the way back might be less difficult than it looked. This turned out to be more or less the case. Though I still had to fight my way through a couple thickets, I did manage to make good time up to the top of the ridge. However, along the way my posterior had begun to ache. I assumed it was just sore from the earlier jab, but I discovered the thorn and a good bit of branch had been traveling with me for several hours. Scowling, I withdrew it.

Now that I was on the top of the ridge I was in familiar territory, and started looking for the easiest way north. Several times I found clear signs that manzanita had been cut back. This, however, was of no help since the branches had been left in deep piles, making a new kind of barrier to get through. What's more, creatures had built dens within the piles, and I was not anxious to put my foot into someone's living room. Soon enough, though, I was treading ground I'd hiked a couple of times already. The despair I had previously felt when faced with a wall of Whitethorn or manzanita was largely gone now, and I plunged into the mess with vigor, not to say pleasure. Halfway through the final thicket I was confronted with the remains of a dead tree that had toppled onto the brush. I was forced to climb up out of the bushes and onto the tree trunk, tightrope walk along its branches, and then lower myself back down into the bushes below where I eventually fought my way to a clearing. When I finally pulled myself free of the last mazanita, I looked like a pincushion. From there I headed down to the sluice, and from there down to the ridge where the forestry signs mark the way, and in a short time I was standing at the top of the deer trail down into Johnson Creek. Within half an hour, I was back at the car. I did my usual tick check, finding only one, and started home. It was about 4:30 - a six hour hike. The sun was far to the west and obscured by orange clouds but beneath these a golden lozenge shimmered on ocean. When I got home, I ordered a pizza and took a shower, scrubbing off the dust, the urushiol, and the red stuff, hemoglobin not hematite. Afterwards, I went to the kitchen to put some food down for the cat. He brushed up against my shins; it felt like sandpaper.

Done