Calcite Mine Hike

Date:  24 April 2011

Who hiked:  Me, Hubby, Things 1 and 2

Where:  Calcite Mine, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

When: 1130-1400

Distance:  4.2 miles (from "101 Hikes in Southern California")

Weather:  sunny, clear, windy; temps in low/mid 80s

Do you like sand in your lunch?  Turns out, neither do we.

But I'm not there yet...

We had a disastrous morning, trying to fix pancakes while the wind howled through our campsite. We gave that up as a bad job and made our way to Borrego Springs, where we had Easter breakfast at a diner in town.  Read it all here!

The Things in the slot canyon

Our hike today was to an old mine, where calcite was extracted for gunsights during WWII. 

The hike was described as moderate by Jerry Schad in "101 Hikes in Southern California". I would classify the hike as easy to moderate -- there were a few steep climbs, but none of them were particularly long.  

There was very little shade along the route -- hiking this in the warmer months could be brutal. As always in the desert, wear a hat, wear sunscreen, and have plenty of water.

We parked at the pull-off on Rt S22 (Borrego Salton Seaway) and headed to the trailhead, about 0.1 mi away.  The trail, a road suitable only for 4WD, drops steeply into a wash next to the parking area and immediately climbs back up the ridge.

We followed this road as it wound along the ridge. Because it was so windy, we were scoured by blowing sand when we were exposed on the ridge. When the road dropped behind the crest, we didn't have to deal with the wind, but some of us did get warm. 

The trail is well-marked -- it's a road, after all -- and not that challenging.  As I said, there are some serious slopes to handle, but none of them are long enough to pose a serious challenge to most hikers.

Isn't this where R2D2 met up with the Jawas?

We often play games to keep the Things motivated and, perhaps, distracted during the hike. Our game on this hike was brainstorming ideas for a new website.  The concept of our imaginary website is to post pictures of places that looked like scenes from Star Wars movies -- the original trilogy, of course.  None of these pictures would be the actual locations where scenes were shot -- but we would claim they were. And occasionally we would add a picture that was clearly wrong and claim that it was the real place where a scene was shot -- e.g. take a picture at the Harbor Reef in Two Harbors and claim it was where the cantina scenes from Tatooine were shot.  Not very clever or funny, but talking about it kept a 10 and 7 year old hiking!

Southern desert horned lizard
Phrynosoma platyrhinos calidiarum

The highlight of our hike?  A horned lizard!  The boys were ahead of me on the trail and I saw them stooping to look at something.  They waved me over and pointed to the most fantastic horned lizard! Thing 2 found it by almost stepping on it, so he was very proud of himself. We got close and took pictures, but the lizard kept with his "you can't see me" strategy.

The Things point at the horned lizard

Shortly after seeing the horned lizard, we came to the bottom of a ravine and turned left to explore a slot canyon. It quickly narrowed to a single-file width and we followed it until we came to a couple of boulders stuck in the slot. The boys wanted to go further, but Hubby nixed that idea -- something about time and not wanting to have to cut off our children's arms if they got trapped in the canyon.

Thing 2 was really ticked off at life at this point.  He was tired, he was hot, he didn't like hiking, his foot itched. He didn't want to hike to the mine. He just wanted to stay in the slot canyon. We explained that mountain lions like to eat small boys and that got him moving.

The trail goes mostly uphill from there, until we reached the calcite mine at the top of the next ridge. The mine was anti-climactic, to be honest.  There's a bare hill top, with trenches exposing veins of calcite.  There are calcite shards everywhere and Thing 1 had a great time looking at rocks.

We sat in the shade of a trench and pulled out lunch.  The wind would gust, covering us and our lunch with sand.

Thing 2: "Oh great. Anyone want a piece of sausage covered with sand?"

Hubby:  "No thanks.  I have my own."

Thing 2 was so annoying by this point that he and I started our return trip to the car, while Hubby and Thing 1 explored more of the mine. The second Thing's attitude improved immediately as we walked back to the car -- and he held my hand most of the way. The other Thing and Hubby walked around the mine more, then caught up with us on our trip.

I was surprised how quickly our return was -- it took us less than an hour to get back. I had not realized that we had been so poky on the way out.

My advice for other hikers thinking about tackling this hike?  Hike to the slot canyon and spend your time exploring it.  Skip the calcite mine. But maybe that's just because of the sand in my sandwich.