 By RANDALL HENDERSON Map by Norton Allen |
range of the San Pedro Martir mountains 25 miles inland, with the cap
of El Diablo rising a little above the level of the long ridge. It looked like
an easy climb, after we reached the base of the range. The major difficulty
appeared to be the 25 miles of sand and rocks between San Felipe and the base
of the mountain. No passable road crossed this terrain. In 1934 we organized our climbing party. Early one March morning in that year our two cars crossed through the Calexico-Mexicali port of entry with San Felipe as our immediate goal. Harry Horton, El Centro attorney who had done considerable exploring on the Baja California peninsula, was driving his desert jalopy, with W. J. McClelland, Imperial county clerk, as his companion. I was riding with Huey in his Ford pickup. Both cars had big tires for sand travel. Today gulf-bound fishermen roll |
|
| TWICE
I tried to climb El Picacho del Diablo-and failed. Then on the third attempt I
reached the summit. My companion on the final ascent was Norman Clyde, well
known mountaineer of the High Sierra. It is only 15 miles from the floor of San Felipe Valley to the summit of El Diablo, elevation 10,136 feet, highest peak on the Lower California peninsula. But the terrain is so rugged it required three days of grueling work to make the ascent. El Picacho del Diablo is in the San Pedro Martir Range 125 miles south |
of the
California border. It has been climbed several times by parties approaching
from the Pacific coast. But there was no record of anyone having scaled the
mountain from the floor of the San Felipe Valley on the desert side. Malcolm Huey suggested that we attempt to make the desert ascent. That was in the early 1930s when Malcolm and I were on a fishing trip to the little Mexican village of San Felipe on the gulf coast 140 miles south of Mexicali. We could see the great white granite |
|