What a hellhole......

4:10 pm - Thursday - January 6th - Anza Borrego Desert, CA - 71° F, 21% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the south......clear, blue skies today, and the high was 74° F.  On this date in 2016 we hiked down to Clark 'Dry' Lake Bed for the first time.  It had been a wet winter, and there was actually water in the 'dry' lake bed.......↴

Steven Dempsey in the foreground

For those of you who wondered why I haven't posted my daily blog until late afternoon we were up at 4:20 am this morning, and on the road by 5:30 am to arrive at the Mexican Border by 7:30 am Pacific time (8:30 am Arizona time).  Our appointment  times are based on Arizona time, and were at 9 am (moi), and 9:30 am (TLE) respectively.

Wednesday it was time for another hike.  We got going around 11:30 am, and were at the trailhead for Hellhole Canyon.  I'm surprised the name didn't scare us away...lol.  From the trailhead it is reputed to be 2.5 miles to the water falls, so round trip would make it 5 miles even.  We could have begun our hike from the Visitors Center, but that would have made it a 7 mile hike, and 5 seemed just about right to us......

......the grade was slightly more inclined than the Palm Canyon trail we did a while back, but it was steady, and pretty straight until the last half mile.  As we were entering that final half mile we met some hikers coming back down the hill who playfully warned us the easy part was over.....initially we thought they were kidding, but they were not.  The final half mile, had we hiked the entirety of it, involved a lot ups and downs, and some bouldering.....not one of TLE's favorite activities.  When we got about one tenth of a mile from the 'water falls' we stopped.....we could see where the water falls would have been 'falling' if they had been 'falling', but they were dry, so we didn't see any point, especially TLE, in covering the final tenth.  We took a short break to eat a snack, and hydrate, then began our way back down the trail......

......we ended up covering the round trip hike in just under two hours of total walking time having covered 4.82 miles in all.....

.....averaging 2.5 mph over 825' elevation gain, and burned around 866 caloric units.  As you can see, the trail was mostly straight up the canyon.  Within minutes of returning to our car we were parking in front of Big Horn Fudge Company to get some ice cream for a hike well done.....

.....after another stop at Center Market we were on our way home, arriving there around 3 pm.  While we did not have a sunset fire, there was certainly a sunset worthy of a fire......

.....since we had to be on the road by 5:30 am Thursday morning to drive down to Los Algodones, Mexico for our annual dental appointments we decided to forego the fire, and get to bed early.

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