Puff (SDC #82, 2716′) • map • directions*

Indian Hill (SDC #75, 2240′) • map • directions*

Moan (SDC #77, 2939′) • w/Indian Hill

 

I had originally planned to loop Puff with Indian Hill, Moan, and Piedras Grandes, but Anna and I had extra time for Piedras Grandes the day before, leaving us with a shorter day and the luxury of waking up with the sun. We’d slept at the entrance to Mortero Palms Canyon, the starting point for Puff BM, which we now decided to hike separately from Moan and Indian Hill to avoid walking 5+ miles of dirt road. It was below freezing when we got up at 7am, offset by the fact that we were surrounded by beautiful orange rock that we’d missed during our drive in the night before.

 

 

I was excited for Puff as it is one of the best places to see the Goat Canyon Trestle, a 600 foot long and 200 foot high wooden truss built for the railroad in the 1930s. The history of the truss is amazing, a video explaining it can be found here. After a quick breakfast, Anna and I followed the sign from the parking area towards Mortero Palms Canyon, getting started just before 8am. We followed a use trail through the canyon and made it to the palm grove in just twenty minutes from the truck. The palm tree oasis hidden between orange rock walls was seemingly out of place, to me more impressive than the more popular grove in Borrego Palm Canyon. 

 

 

 

 

We spent a few minutes exploring the palms, walking through the middle of the grove in order to continue through the canyon to the west. We climbed through a few class 3 dry falls behind the palm grove before reaching easier terrain further into Mortero Palms Canyon. 

 

We were able to pick out a decent route through Mortero Palms Canyon, usually finding a use trail on the right when the bottom of the wash wasn’t clear. When we neared the end of the canyon near the 2800 foot level, we found more use trail heading up the left side and followed it to the plateau between Mortero Palms Canyon and Goat Canyon. We continued over rolling hills for half a mile before descending into Goat Canyon, the luxury of the path luring us further down than we needed to go.

 

Once Goat Canyon steepened into a rocky drainage (leading to the bottom of the truss), we re-evaluated our position and started the cross-country trek over to Puff. We hiked north over cactus-covered hills and were soon able to see what we guessed was the Puff benchmark. We descended several hundred feet, climbed across the narrow and rocky ridge to its end, to which we arrived to Puff BM at 10:10am. 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent a good twenty minutes admiring the Goat Canyon Trestle, Carrizo Gorge, and the Carrizo Gorge Railway. Wow.Eventually we continued back towards Mortero Palms Canyon, taking a more direct route from Puff rather than back into Goat Canyon. We relocated the trail leading down into Mortero Palms, this time finding the morteros (Native American grinding hole) for which the canyon is named. For the most part we followed our ascent route, with the exception of finding some large blocks to climb down on the south side of the canyon rather  than the polished dry falls we’d come up from behind the palm grove. Once back at the truck, we had a tuna lunch before making the drive over towards Moan BM and Indian Hill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indian Hill and Moan

The drive from the Mortero Palms trailhead to the starting point for Indian Hill and Moan was an interesting one over mediocre roads. We followed Dos Cabeza Rd, crossing to the east side of the old railroad tracks near an old water tank, and continued along the road to its northern end. It took twenty minutes to drive the five miles, high clearance was again nice to have. I was surprised to see several vehicles parked at what would be our “trailhead”, in a circular clearing overlooking a large wash. 

 

 

Now back on foot, Anna and I crossed back over the Carrizo Gorge Railway (part of the same tracks that we had seen from Puff BM) and hiked southwest across the desert floor. I used my GPS to point the way towards Indian Hill as I’ve read that there’s some discrepancy on which is the “real” Indian Hill. My GPS led us to a point just a few hundred feet above the desert floor and we climbed class 2 slopes to its summit. It had taken just twenty minutes to reach the top from the truck. I was surprised to find a summit register, and supposedly there’s a cave near the top that has a blackened roof from Native American fires, but I wasn’t able to locate it in the few minutes I spent looking.

From Indian Hill we could see over to Moan BM, our next destination. It looked like a beast covered in enormous boulders and I had a hard time believing that it was just 700 feet higher and less than a mile away We started down the west side of Indian Hill and aimed for the base of a rocky ridge coming down from the north side of Moan BM, then skirted around most of the boulders on the lower part of the ridge and climbed through a steeper section from about 2300 to 2500 feet. 

 

 

After climbing through steeply stacked boulders, the incline subsided and we walked across rock slabs and easier terrain before steepening again just a few hundred vertical feet from the Moan benchmark. Approaching Moan from the north led to some massive boulders that we declined to climb, so we wrapped around to the right (counter clockwise) and worked our way up, finding the benchmark along with a register on top of those same house-sized blocks of granite. The Moan Benchmark is not the high point of the mass of rock and dirt that it lies on, and my GPS has been useful for finding these obscure benchmarks. 

 

Anna and I savored the final and unique views from Moan BM. We could see the Goat Canyon Trestle to the south, Carrizo Gorge to the west, and the rocky desert to the north and east. Anza Borrego never seemed to disappoint, the east side of Carrizo Gorge being exceptional. We took our time on the way down, admiring some of the unique rock formations, and watched the sunset on the way back to County Highway S2, thrilled about our first two days in 2011. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*-For both Puff and Moan/Indian Hill, I’ve added intermediate points in the driving directions to keep you away from the rough northern section of Moretro Canyon Rd (the section between the S2 and Dos Cabeza Rd). For the Puff directions, the southern part of Mortero Canyon Rd is in decent shape and connects directly to Dos Cabeza Rd (that big loop in Google Maps is unnecessary).