Hike Report (overdue) Hollenbeck Canyon

I took a wander along Hollenbeck Canyon, just to get a sense of the country.  I stopped in Jamuz to ask for directions, they'd never heard of it ... it was all of 5 miles out of town, in a non-fashionable direction, so fair enough.  They went so far as to deny its existence, because if it'd been there, they'd surely have heard of it.  I'm sure there's a parable there about foreign policy.

It's a desert here, who'd have thought?  And so much granite, more than I've ever seen in one place.  Theoretically, then, this would make the soil quite fertile, except for the whole desert thing.  The land was formed by vulcanism 20 million years ago.  Imagine that, those hills and mountainettes are over 20 million years old.  Shows how hard granite it.

View South from a Private Road

 The nicest thing about this country is the far vistas, no trees to obscure the view.  In this place, one could actually use a compass to take back-bearings, assuming only that one could obtain USGS maps.  I'm told printing them is the best option.  It's nice that they're free.

Sage of some kind

 The vegetation is all low herbaceous stuff, so dry, so flammable, but the total biomass is really quite low (compared to what I'm used to.)  I think they call this land form chaparral.  Maybe that's where 'chaps' comes from too.  I dunno.  You'd definitely want gaiters if you intended any kind of cross country walking.  This place would be full of rattlesnakes.
 

The course of my wandering followed a formed road along a creek.  The creek wasn't flowing, though it had some pretty deep, pretty stagnant, pools of water.

Old brick hearth, part of a ruin

And people lived here, once.  Then thought better of it.

Oak in the landscape

By its occasional flows, the creek supports a reasonably rich and diverse local ecosystem.  It is accompanied in its course by some kind of oak, some kind of tough gnarled wind and drought resistant oak.  Good for the oaks, I say!

 And the oaks support squirrels (you can see one in this photo, if you squint.)  And the squirrels support rattlesnakes.  And the rattlesnakes support road-runners.  And road-runners supported the Depatie-Freling animation studio long after they'd run out of ideas.

I actually saw a road-runner!  Just a fleeting glimpse as he barrelled across the track about 50 meters ahead of me.  He looked like a chicken on stilts, but black with a red topnotch.  I looked, but could not see an accompanying coyote.  I imagine he was hiding behind an ACME rocket launcher or something.  I think people could improve the landscape by nailing ACME signs to things.

One distinctive difference between Oz and here ... hardly any ants.  Not much insect life at all, really.

Mount Lyons or something.

That mountain up ahead has a webcam on it.  Here are some photos from there. You can find videos of what the San Diegans laughingly call wildfires taken from that peak.  Of course, I got nowhere near it, that thing is *high*.

And the end of all our wanderings shall be a bloody nice margarita