After a day spent exploring the desert environs of the Cargo Muchacho Mountains and Indian Pass Wilderness, we took the amazingly beautiful Indian Pass Trail into Picacho SRA and reached the lower Colorado River just as the afternoon light was starting to turn to gold. What an incredible feeling to reach cool running water after a long day in the desert!
We camped along the banks of the Colorado and made it to Taylor Lake before sunrise before heading out. I just started processing the photos from this trip and have more to come...but I'm headed out on the trail again so I need to do some serious catch-up work when I get back.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was the really cool couple we met in Gavilon Wash coming the opposite way in their jeep pulling an adventure trailer. Bill wanted to talk to them about how the trailer handled and we ended up talking about the jeeping life and exchanging trail condition reports for well over an hour (which put us a little behind schedule haha). They told us that they were supposed to be headed to Arizona (this was Thanksgiving weekend) but saw this trail and decided to see where it went, and their family had no idea where they were. After we went our separate ways Bill and I turned to each other and said that will be us in ten years, still doing what we love to do.
Indian Pass Trail is one of the prettiest trails I've done so far here in California and Picacho SRA has become one of my favorite places. The trail passes through a sacred Indian Site before heading down into Gavilon Wash. It is a hidden gem with amazing rock formations including arches, wild burros and desert bighorn, thousands of migratory waterfowl and several remote campsites along the banks of the river (as well as the main hosted campground accessible by a 25 mile long graded dirt road). The best part is that most of it (the prettiest part) is only accessible via 4WD (or boat for the boat-in sites). Unfortunately this park is slated for closure in the spring of 2012 due to California budget cuts. I'll be leading a trek out there in a month or so, let me know if you're interested in seeing this beautiful park before it's closed.
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I'm really enjoying the photography community on Google+ and posting for the weekly themes has helped me get back on track with posting but right now my blog posts are pretty much duplicates of my G+ posts, with just a little more info, so apologies to anyone who sees both. Now that I'm getting the hang of things over there I'm going to work on doing a better job of making them compliment rather than duplicate each other.
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