| a list
of equipment, and the essential items for the trip. We had been warned that
this was no expedition for one who could not hike 20 miles a day with a
pack-and have tough energy left at the end of the day to cook and eat his own
dinner. Ed Peterson was assistant leader. He is a naturalist, and gave us
interesting information about the botany of this mountain wilderness. Other
members of the party were: Freda Walbrecht, Los Angeles attorney, and the first
woman known to have climbed al1 the 14,000-foot peaks on the west coast; Capt.
Sam Fink of the Santa Ana fire department and a seasoned mountaineer; Bill
Stewart, physics and astronomy student at the University of California in Los
Angeles; Jeane McSheehy, former WASP, now teaching geography in Coronado high
school; Barbara Lilley, co-ed from San Diego State College. Six were from Northern California: Helen Rudy, Al Schmitz and Frank Thias of San Francisco, Walter Donakhho of Sacramento and Al Maher and Jane Tucker of Palo Alto. Mrs. Meling welcomed us with fresh apple juice. Her family came into |
Lower
California from Texas in the 1880's and settled on the western slopes of the
San Pedro Martir Mountains. The only transportation then was by wagon train and
they had to make the roads as they came. Mr. Meling's family came into the
country in 1908 from Norway. The ranch house nestles comfortably on the bank of
the sprawling Rio San Telmo. There is no telephone. Kerosene lamps light the
parlor. Mrs. Meling is a fine looking middle-aged woman, obviously capable of meeting all the situations that must be met during a lifetime spent a hundred miles from a doctor. She showed a motherly concern for our party. We did not meet Mr. Meling. He was out guiding another party. Accommodations at the Rancho are as follows: rooms, $3 per day; meals, $5 per day; riding horses, $3 per day, a packer, $5 per day; pack animals. $2 per day. Hot showers are available. Ray Gorin checked our equipment to make sure no one ventured into that wilderness without the essential items that would keep us safe and independent for five days in a back-country |
without grocery or
drug stores or doctors. The dunnage was made ready to load on the mules. On Tuesday morning before the moon was gone, we were cutting through the Meling pasture in an easterly direction. Each carried a lunch, canteen of water, halizone tablets, sweater, hat and sunburn lotion. Mrs. Meling with characteristic solicitude, came along for a mile to show us a turn-off she was afraid we would miss. Ten miles later we passed the abandoned Socorro placer mines. The horse trail climbed gradually over pleasant ridges covered with manzanita, buck brush and California coffee berry. Birds seen in this Upper Sonoran zone were the wren-tit, California jay, valley quail and raven. Senor Juan Soto, the only person we met in this whole region after leaving the Rancho San Jose, lives in a stone hut in a small meadow. He posed jauntily for pictures. His senora, he said, had gone to their ranchito three miles up a steep trail to tend the corn and potato patch. The Oak pasture was to be our first lunch spot. As we approached a fork in the trail and were debating |