Borrego Springs Stories
In the midst of what is regarded as one of America's hottest and driest deserts, it seems a bit surprising to find a place where mosses, ferns, sycamores, and cottonwoods flourish around a sparkling waterfall. …
Sunny winter days are perfect for exploring San Diego County's population-equivalent of Saudi Arabia's Ar Rab al Khali, or "Empty Quarter." Virtually no one lives in the county's northeasternmost 100 square miles, an arid region …
Anza-Borrego's Cougar Canyon is a place where new worlds open up at every turn. There are more gorgeous sights to see along a half-mile of this canyon than in a full day's hiking in most …
The shorter fall and winter days of low-angle sunshine, clear blue skies, and pleasantly mild temperatures are perfect for exploring any of Anza-Borrego Desert's lowest, hottest, and driest regions. The Truckhaven Rocks, out past Borrego …
Football is upon us, and the corporate sporting press floods the valley with pigskin-preview articles. The Box can do no less. Introducing Borrego Springs High School JV and varsity football coach Randy Peyakov. Borrego Springs …
Off-season (a.k.a. "summer") camping in the Anza-Borrego Desert isn't as outlandish as it may seem -- particularly if you confine your visit to the darker two-thirds of a 24-hour day. On just about any August …
Dotted with weather-beaten pinyon pines, Villager Peak in the southern Santa Rosa Mountains rises nearly a mile above the lowlands of Anza-Borrego Desert. Serious "peak baggers" from around the state are drawn to its summit …
'Even though the animal was dead, it was a real encounter to know there was a [mountain] lion there, to know this is where it fed on this animal," says Deborah Knapp, manager of the …
Elephant trees (Bursera microphylla), once considered exceedingly rare in California, have turned out -- after decades of searching and serendipitous discovery -- to be not so rare north of the international border. Still, the scattered …
Along the canyon walls of Anza-Borrego's Arroyo Tapiado ("Mudwall Wash"), weathering and erosion acting on friable sedimentary rock have produced a strange kind of topography known by some geologists as pseudokarst. Like karst topography, which …
Deep in the corrugated folds of Anza-Borrego's Carrizo Badlands, a trio of sinuous dry washes invites your slow and careful exploration -- first by truck or 4-wheel drive, and then by foot. Here, on the …
Mine Peak, elevation 1850 feet above sea level, stands atop the west end of the Coyote Mountains in far-southern Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. On a clear fall or winter day atop Mine Peak, the view …
With canyons and ravines numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands, the one-thousand-square-mile Anza-Borrego Desert State Park offers a lifetime of scenic exploration. Even the smaller canyons of the park offer a variety of …
Granite Mountain massively swells along the western edge of the Anza-Borrego Desert, its flattish summit presiding over hundreds of square miles of brown desert to the east and the timber-dotted Laguna and Cuyamaca Mountains toward …
For now and for the next several years, the normally slow and painstaking trek ambitious hikers make into the middle and upper reaches of Borrego Palm Canyon will be considerably easier. Much of the impeding …
The 11-mile-long Jasper Trail-Grapevine Canyon route takes hikers and all sorts of wheeled travelers -- on mountain bikes and motorcycles, or in off-road-capable vehicles -- down a series of inclines from Anza-Borrego's cooler western margins …
McCaffrey grabbed a camcorder and asked me to state that, if anything happened to me, he wasn't liable. "Do you want the one-day waiver, or the life-time?" I made some joke about my calling my lawyer first.
The old, never-completed California Riding and Hiking Trail, pieced out of dirt roadways and previously existing trails during the post-World War II years, has never quite disappeared from San Diego County. One branch of this …
Dozens of elephant trees cling to the walls of Torote Canyon, a tributary of Indian Gorge in the southern reaches of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. In Mexico, this tree is called torote, which means "twisted," …
Amid the windswept wastelands of the Anza-Borrego Desert, Borrego Mountain's twin buttes (the East and West buttes) rise with low and broad profiles. From a distance they may look unremarkable, but at close range they …
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park www.anzaborrego.statepark.org 760-767-4684, 760-767-4205 Cactus heaven can be found on the rocky slopes of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, especially at elevations of 1000 to 2000 feet. In March and April you'll be …
Centuries-old paths, forged by the footsteps of Native-Americans, crisscross the county. West of the desert, periodic fires and fast-growing chaparral have erased the obvious traces of most of these trails. Yet in the drier, more …
The average temperature in July is 107. To paraphrase what Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there is no there there — no people (population: about 3000), no movie theater, no stoplight, no convenience store, …
Winding fjordlike through the boulder heaps of the arid In-Ko-Pah Mountains, Bow Willow Canyon promises -- and delivers -- solitude. During a weekday-morning's exploratory venture into Bow Willow's moist upper recesses, no one disturbed my …
The remote and rugged upper reach of Anza-Borrego's most famous "palm canyon," Borrego Palm Canyon, has suddenly become much easier to explore. Last summer's mammoth Pines Fire, which originated near Julian, swept many miles north …
Throughout the Anza-Borrego Desert, the expandable tissues of native barrel, beavertail, cholla, fishhook, and hedgehog cacti may soon become as bloated as they ever get. Flush with supplies of water they can hoard for months …
Road-biking doesn't get any better than on San Diego County's remote mountain and desert rural highways -- especially those beyond Palomar and Julian, where traffic thins considerably and the roads themselves are often accompanied by …
As September grades into October and the sun swings ever lower across the southern sky, the high-desert landscape around Anza-Borrego's Blair Valley becomes comfortable enough for an early-season visit. It's warm, dry, and desolate out …
If you've put off a visit to the local desert this season due to poor wildflower prospects, it's not too late, or too hot, for a rewarding visit to Whale Peak. This gently swelling summit, …
The difference between the $55,000 the hypothetical deputy in Lemon Grove can make by moving to Campo and the $52,500 he can make as a corporal staying in Lemon Grove is only $2500.
Borrego Springs Anza Borrego Desert State Park www.borregosprings.com To paraphrase The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Outer space is big. Really, really, big." Buildings, trees, and lights obscure our view of the big sky, unless …
Thousands of years of cutting and polishing by flash floods and winds have produced the intricate rock formations and slot-like ravines you'll discover at the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains in far-eastern San Diego …
The sun-blasted desert days of summer are over, and Borrego Springs now boasts salubrious temperatures along with its bone-dry air. This community of several thousand residents (in the winter season, at least) squarely placed in …
Despite boasting one of the nation's sunniest climates, despite laboring under towering electricity rates, San Diego County isn't home to a single solar energy plant. It's not that we haven't tried. A 20-acre solar farm …
Drive an hour east on Interstate 8 from San Diego toward El Centro and you won't fail to be impressed by the enormous stacks of rounded boulders thrusting skyward over the high-desert landscape. How did …
Oriflamme Canyon's gurgling waters are borne to the open air high on the east slope of the Laguna Mountains. For five miles they trickle over polished granite and schist bedrock, tumble over small waterfalls, and …
So crazy is the juxtaposition of rock formations at Anza-Borrego's Split Mountain that it makes your head spin. You can't help being amazed at the appearance of orderly sedimentary rock layers in one spot, curved …
Borrego Sink Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Where does the water that falls on Borrego Springs and the Borrego Valley go? Most of it sinks quickly into the desert sand. In times of rare flood, the …
The area called Mountain Palm Springs in southern Anza-Borrego Desert State Park cannot lay claim to the largest palm oases in our local desert, but it does feature some of the most charming ones. The …
As temperatures cool in the desert east of San Diego, campers and hikers are again fanning out over the spacious 1000 square miles of territory in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. If it's solitude you're looking …
Dark thunderclouds moved into Borrego Valley on the afternoon of August 29, terrorizing residents of Borrego Springs with 70 mph gusts of wind and a downpour of one and one-half inches of rain in less …
Sunset Mountain stands lofty and somewhat isolated from the main ridge of the Vallecito Mountains in the center of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. As seen from Borrego Springs and other far points to the west, …
Hard-to-reach Sheep Canyon, secreted in the remote middle reaches of Coyote Canyon in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, features some of the most rugged yet beautiful terrain in San Diego County. The canyon has two main …
The desolate ridge of Coyote Mountain rises like the dark, furrowed flank of an elephant over the sand-drowned Borrego and Clark Valleys in the north part of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Scattered amid slabs of …
This five-mile walk, in the low-lying, desolate, dry Carrizo Badlands of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, takes you to fossil shell "reefs" so dense with fossils that fossilized shells and shell fragments outweigh the sandy matrix …
Indianhead, a 3990-foot promontory crowning the north wall of Borrego Palm Canyon, juts dramatically from the desert floor near Borrego Springs and the Anza-Borrego visitor center. There are several climbing routes to Indianhead's summit but …
With midday temperatures declining into the 80s this month and next, the vast spaces of the Anza-Borrego Desert are again becoming attractive places to explore. For the following hike up Palo Verde Canyon in the …
Like crepuscular creatures emerging at dawn and dusk to seek their prey, photographers are drawn to Anza-Borrego's Font's Point vista early and late in the day, seeking warm, low-angle light. Font's Point overlooks a shockingly …
As daytime high temperatures in the desert sink from the 100s into the 90s during September, it becomes rationally conceivable to plan an overnight trip into Anza-Borrego's intriguing badlands. In fact, if you arrive in …
Big Spring, tucked in a tributary of Tubb Canyon on the west side of Borrego Valley, is one of the more reliable water producers in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. As such, it is an …
Pinyon Ridge stands just high enough on the Anza-Borrego desert rim -- and therefore gets just enough rain -- to support a sparse growth of pinyon-pine trees. Hiking along this ridge, you get expansive views …
Flat Cat Canyon is the curious name given to a rugged gorge southwest of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park visitors' center and not far outside the town of Borrego Springs. Park rangers once found a …