John McFrog's Blog: Highway 1 brings Memories

While going down to Baja Sur last month, I passed the turnoff for San Pedro Martir. Everything had changed so much. What was a sleepy agriculture area is now a part of the urban sprawl. I wondered how the mountain that was of my dreams had become. A post on Baja Nomads made me post this info on my experiences there many years ago.

Here is my post:

Thanks for bringing up the topic of the San Pedro Martir. It has brought back many memories that have not been visited in some time. I used John Robinson's "Camping and Climbing in Baja" as sort of a bible in the 70's and 80's. There was no GPS or topos, so things were much different than now. A good source for more current information is in this report: http://www.dankat.com/swhikes/devil.htm

My first backpack in the San Pedro Martir was after many trips to the eastside canyons of the Sierra Juarez. We got kind of lost on the first day in the maze of canyons and went for a few hours without water. We got to La Gruella meadow and it was like heaven. We followed one stream going towards the west and found it filled with small trout that have adapted to this area by becoming miniature. The species is Nelsoni and they were so numerous that we tried to catch them by hand. I have since fly fished for them at Mike's Sky Ranch and they are good fighters. That spring the grass was at a uniform height throughout the forest and it looked like a giant city park that someone had mowed.

I kind of got the bug to climb Picacho del Diablo about 25 years ago after the above backpack. I joined two other people and hired a guide who had been the head of San Diego's search and rescue team. We went in from the west, stopping for a great meal at Meling Ranch.

Without GPS even the guide got lost once. Going with him was special in that he would point out where this or that climber was buried (with the family's permission) because they had made some serious error in judgement. I was hoping that we wouldn't make some similar misstep. It took four days for us to make the peak and back.

I will always remember the feeling of remoteness and wilderness in the San Pedro Martir. Without the current technology of sat phones etc. my time there was an adventure in retrospect but rather frightening at moments along the way. Of course, the epic approach of Norman Clyde from Yuma to the east side of Diablo and then to the peak is hard to even imagine.

I didn't see any snakes on the climb but two weeks after our trip a Sierra Club fellow was bitten by a snake which reportedly had one and a half inches between the fangs. This has been a big year for snakes in San Diego, so definitely be aware while hiking there. Reasonable caution should keep everyone safe.

Have a great trip and thanks again for tickling those old memories.

View from the Peak looking toward the Gulf