Post your upcoming trip out to Anza Borrego here. Great place to organize a group trip.
Indian Canyon to Borrego Palm Canyon Traverse info
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DHeuschele Posts: 87
1/23/2015
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In March I was considering an Indian Canyon to Borrego Palm Canyon Traverse with side trip up Indian Head. I have done the traverse before and Indian Head before.
A while back they graded Bolder Alley (maybe 3 years ago). I was wondering how difficult that stretch is now. My vehicle could handle Boulder Alley pre-grade but I need to make sure we have another vehicle that can handle that stretch.
If I do not do Indian Canton to Borrego Palm Canyon I may do Anza to upper Coyote Canyon traverse. Anyone have an idea of how long that shuttle would be? I was thinking maybe 4 hours with the slow speed getting down from the upper part of Coyote Canyon (Upper part being as high as the road currently goes). Due to the expected shuttle time I am heavily leaning toward the above trip.
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DHeuschele Posts: 87
3/29/2015
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We did the Indian Canyon to Borrego Palm Canyon traverse (with a small subset doing Indian Head) this weekend.
I have seen Boulder Alley worse but I would not say it is doable by any 4X4. There were moderate size holes. Moderate size loose rocks and not many vehicles going up it. In our group we used 3 cars to go up it (2 4Runners and an older pathfinder) which required some shuttling. We did not take vehicles like Honda Pilot, Ford Explorer, etc. up it.
One group (the group that ended up being slower) started at 9:30 AM and the other group at 10 AM.
The hike was noticably harder than when I last did this hike. I am virtually certain we are the first to do hike this season. The going rate for the first mile after the confluence (there was plenty of water) was real slow (below 0.5 miles an hour). In addition we had a 2 small groups turn back that resulted in lost time for gear exchange, etc. Consequently instead of making it to the Indian Head spur to camp we camped about 1 mile below the confluence. We were in 2 groups. The second/slower tier got to our chosen camp area (versus planned camp area) after 8PM (yes they were going down that thing in the dark). Once they started past the confluence there was no place to camp until our location.
The next morning the group first to arrive at camp left around 7AM and the other group was to leave within 30 minutes. The further down canyon we got the better the trail as the people coming up from Borrego Palm Canyon all have different turn around points but apparently none recently ventured as high as our current campsite.
The first group got to the Indian Head spur before 8:30 but the second group got there close to 10 AM (they left later than planned and were moving slowly). I had decided at 8:30 to skip Indian Head but by 10 quite a few people from the front group who were planning on going (including my son) had changed to not go (it was already quite hot by 10AM).
So only 4 of our strongest hikers decided to include Indian Head (1:30 up, 1:15 down).
So if anyone was considering doing the hike this may be the time as I had ~20 hikers break trail so the trail has not been better this year (maybe in a few years). However, it took us ~10.5 hours for the faster group to make it the 8.5 miles to the Indian Head spur (some of that was dealing with those turning around). Last time it took me 9 hours but the "trail" was a little better back then and I was in better condition. I think with the trail we made 9 hours could be done much easier than for our group.
I had a mixed bag on liking or hating (one called it the worse hike of his life) the hike. Very few people in between. Mile 2 (start of the hill) through 7 were all tough; it was much nicer about 1 mile above the Indian head spur and of course the palm grove trail is like a freeway.
About half of this group is doing C2C next weekend (not me). I think in some way this was harder than they will find C2C (certainly not in every way).
So now is the time to take the hike but even with the trail we broke this is a hard hike.
edited by DHeuschele on 3/29/2015
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