The mesquite thickets of Ballarat served as a campground for several parties as the Encampment activities were ablaze in town.
PS Ballarat is booming! An Oxnard party has bored a well, built a concrete block store, and is developing a trailer court. The 300'+ well yields potable water, though it has a brackish taste. To remedy the situation a pilot solar still has been erected. If successful, a large scale still will supply the trailerites with distilled water for drinking... Leaders of the Saturday hike were Miriam Myhre and Bob Greenawalt. Incidentally, Miriam has sought higher ground and is teaching school and living at Clear Creek, above the city lights. Her new address is: P0 Box 246, La Canada, Calif 90019.
THANKSGIVING WEEKEND PEAKING OF THE DEVIL -Gene Gail
Headlines read: RECORD 42 CLIMB BAJA CALIFORNIA'S HIGHEST MTN Nov 24-27"
This holiday weekend saw the largest crowd ever assembled on the top of Big Picacho(Cerro de la Encantada), 42 triumphant souls. The weather was perfect, no one got hurt, we had a little time to rest and got out early enough to get home by midnight Sunday.
People kept drifting into the meeting place all night Wed, and the caravan moved out at 7AM the next morn for the Santa Clara Ranch roadhead. We
paused a few minutes for one tire
change and a picture-taking session when the mountain with a little scarf of
clouds stood up so proudly above the dry lake bed. 46 of us began the hike
across the desert at 10AM and were soon at the canyon mouth, shortly to be
greeted by the first waterfall. The stream ran well. Here, the two tragedies of
the trip occurred. One hapless fellow set his pack down too hard and broke a
bottle of 150 proof run in it. This proved most tantalizing, as the lovely
smell persisted almost the whole trip. But even worse, Bill Banks discovered
that in his pack was a broken jar of honey! Ugh! Imagine that!Bill Clifton came in a day earlier, and had placed a climbing rope for us over the waterfall-good man. Here we were able to quickly negotiate this most vexing obstacle quickly and we got about half way up the canyon by nightfall.
We started hiking at dawn and established a new campsite, a quarter mile below Cedar Camp(the traditional take-off point), arriving about 2PM Fri. The leaders climbed a western ridge high enough to see the peak, and a more direct route avoiding Teapot Ridge, was selected. This is the so-called "night route" and was used once before as a descent that took place at night, hence the term. It comes directly dawn from the slot Wash, and hugs the north slope of Teapot Ridge all the way. Resting the remainder or the day made tigers out of the party and the next morning all contenders were standing in line at 5:30(still dark) ready to march, Graham Stephenson, Eric Schumacher, and Bill Banks were not AWOL as they had gone ahead of the group on Thursday clear up to Cedar Camp, in order to climb Blue Bottle Peak on the southwest rim of Canyon Diablo on Friday.
Bill Clifton had climbed up Slot Wash Friday and slept there among the icicles.
The good group was there on the North Summit (two feet higher) of C de la E at 10AM Sat to view the Sea of Cortez, the entire Sari Pedro Martir Range, the