A trip through the Southern California Desert

or A Weekend with Bernie

On Saturday, April 27, 1996, I rode with Bernie Wong on a trip through the Southern California Desert. We took the Pinyon Mountain Trail through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The trail is a 4WD jeep trail stretching about 30 miles through the desert. We took Bernie's Jeep Cherokee, a trail guidebook, some topographical maps, and assorted supplies (e.g. lots of water) in case we got stuck in the desert.

About seven-or-so miles from the start of the trail, it cuts through a small ridge. The cut is so narrow that it leaves mere inches of clearance on either side of a 4WD vehicle. It's called The Squeeze.

Here's a picture of Bernie, letting some air out of the tires. The Squeeze is in the background. Click on a picture to see a full-sized version.

This is a picture of the Squeeze itself. I had to stand on the other side, with a walkie-talkie, and give Bernie directions as he slowly crept the Jeep through. I felt sort of like that guy on Airplane who directed the 747 into the gate. "Forklift? It's over there!"

Obviously, the Jeep made it through. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture until after it was over.

According to the guide, there is a "dropoff" on the trail about a mile after the Squeeze, and the guide says that the park rangers give a 50/50 chance of a vehicle rolling over on its way down.

Bernie: "This can't be the dropoff. No way any vehicle will make it down. But the guide says there's a chance. Is this it? Maybe we can try it."
Me: "No way. Uh uh. This is suicidal. This is nuts. We must have taken a wrong turn."

After the squeeze, we followed the trail and came to the top of a small cliff at one end of a ravine. This is a picture of Bernie, looking down the fall and contemplating an insane course of action. (It's probably a bit farther down than it looks in the picture. Note that Bernie is looking almost straight down.)

Eventually, we convinced ourselves that we had taken a wrong turn, so we backtracked a bit and found the right turnoff. Here's a picture of Bernie trying to negotiate the Jeep through a tight spot, while I stood in front and kept an eye on clearance above and below. Note the huge rock on the right, with inches to spare.

We finally found the dropoff. It was -- I dunno -- maybe fifty feet in height, with a 45 degree slope. Lots of holes, really soft sand and dirt... You could see how maybe a vehicle would roll over on its way down. It's obviously a one-way dropoff, since the sand was too soft for anything other than an ATV to go up. This picture was taken from the bottom of the dropoff, where I found a beer can left by previous visitors.

We examined the dropoff on foot and decided on a course of action. Again, I stood at the bottom with the walkie-talkie to watch, guide, and take pictures. In these pictures, Bernie is starting the descent. I was thinking that, if the Jeep started to roll, I might have time to get a few really cool pictures before diving out of the way.

While Bernie was driving down, a couple of Navy or Air Force F-something-or-other jet fighter and/or bombers flew overhead, making a really cool sound in the otherwise quiet desert. (The desert wasn't really quiet -- there were a few desert birds and lots of desert flies.) I got a couple of pictures.

The descent didn't turn out to be too bad. In fact, from my viewpoint, it seemed really smooth and non-dangerous.

At about the 10-mile point, after stopping for lunch, we came upon something listed in the guidebook and the maps as Split Rock. Pretty obvious, huh? Anyhoo, the guidebook (and the map) said that there were "stone petroglyphs and pictographs" around the rock. So we got out and looked.

We climbed in and on it, we walked around it, and we could never be sure that what we saw were pictographs, eroded by the desert environment, or whether we were just looking at natural discolorations in the rock. We did find mortars in surrounding rocks, where the artists (Native Americans? desert graffiti artists? ancient taggers?) ground pigments from the area.

Is this a pictograph? A petroglyph? What's a petroglyph? (Dictionaries, not being necessary for desert survival -- or for lunch -- were left at home. Still, you can guess what "petro" and "glyph" mean.)

We had more than half of the trail left to go. The second half of the trail went through Sand Canyon. This is a picture of the hill (or mountain in the distance) which marked the entrance to Sand Canyon.

Then I ran out of film.

From the beginning to the end of the trail, the trip took about 6 hours, creeping along at only a few miles per hour. The first half of the trail was a largely solitary trip, but as we approached the end, we passed lots of other vehicles... going the easy way.