Walking the San Diego River: February 2014

Since last week I have found myself doing quite a bit of research on the San Diego River and the geologic history of the county, and also the human history, in part because I have become aware of how little I know. As someone who holds an advanced degree in geology I feel I should know more about the local environment. Even more so because I grew up (went to high school) in Riverside. I know there mountains are dominated by igneous intrusives and metamorphics of roughly Cretaceous age. I know of the Tertiary and Quaternary marine sediments. I know of the Kumeyaay and their ancestors who lived off the natural abundance and ground acorns. I even did a middle school project on the California missions (to put it politely, some missionaries were indeed nice people, others missionaries were awful that I would have to use not family friendly terms to express what I really think about them)
All this and I still feel like I know so little about the world Anita and I are walking through. It is said that there comes a point in ones education where one becomes aware of what they don't know far faster than they can ever know it. I am far beyond that phase and watching the universe expand away, knowing that the unknowable universe is expanding even faster. It turns out this metaphor actually applies to the universe as we now understand it. We need to both be at peace with knowing it is not all knowable, while staying curious enough to learn what we can.

Coffee through red vines is really tasty and you can
have it the Old Town Transit Station mini mart

looking out across the river

So our journey today once again begins at Old Town. Riding the trolley I have gotten to know a bit of the city I have never known before. You see patterns and people on the public transit that are denizens of a different system. Every week we have evesdropped, observed and enjoyed our journey. We were under the impression this week that this would be our last journey of this nature until I discovered the 848 bus line. So looks like we have one more week of this fun and joy. I took a fewer pictures this time as we have been this way several times. Still it takes not away from how lovely the journey is here. I consider the Green line to be the nicest of the trolley routes and certainly the one that cuts through the poshest neighborhoods. But it is still everybody's trolley. I have heard students, people in recovery programs, business people, families, flea marketeers, mentally unbalanced types. the whole gamut really.

A flea market at Qualcomm stadium

Looking up the wilderness

Climbing out of Grantville

The inside of the SDSU rail tunnel

We are getting farther and farther from home base. From SDSU we had to transfer to the 115. I like to call this "the bumpy bus" as the one we took last week had really bad suspension and my tired body kept hitting against the windows whenever I tried to rest. Today, however we were in better shape and the bus made its way from the university over through Del Cerro and then up into San Carlos. These are the lovely southern California neighborhoods that came about during the 50's 60's and 70's as the automobile came to dominate transportation. The roads are indeed lovely here and the houses all seem to have views. We get off at the Navajo and Jackson Drive intersection and make our way toward the river.

Looking out toward Cowles peak from Jackson Drive

Beginning our quite rapid descent to the river we are overlooking a canyon and the ridges. This first bit of walking I am focused on getting to where I think the real river is. This is however part of the journey. We are a bit tired, cramped and the weather is quite warm at 79 degrees, and the steep grade is hard on our knees. We are not getting any younger. I've had a knee injury or two and Anita tells me that we are to go nice and easy. I am impatient.

Our walkway down to the valley

Speaks for itself

Mission Gorge Road ascending between Pyle's peak and Kwaay Paay

Wildflowers on the fence

more wildflowers

We have arrived

This is the first place anyone going the park who is unfamiliar with it should go: the visitors center. It is quite a nice one, and maintains good hours on the weekend. There are tours, movies, trinkets for sale. Detailed exhibits on the wildlife and culture and history of the river. My favorite part was all the details about the life and times of the Kumeyaay and their creations. This is the tribe that inhabited and still does inhabit much of the San Diego River basin, and who's work made the missions possible. They were very handy with crafts and many of their works have survived hundreds of years and are on display here. There are also kid's activities, and meeting rooms and all things you'd normally see at some place far more substantial. When you consider that Mission trails is a City park the visitor's center is pretty impressive. This however is no ordinary city park. It is the largest one in California and 7th largest in the nation, covering several peaks and mission Gorge and some outlying ares.

Visitor's center

Looking up Mission gorge from the observation deck: the way ahead.

Crows or hawks take flight

The trail leads down into the gorge

Leaving the Visitor's center we continued down the fire road to the river. For the first time in a while we could hear the babbling of a stream beside us and took heart. The river itself remains lush in an otherwise dry time. It is very much at the surface thanks to the relative impermeability of the granite bedrock here. Still there is water in the fractures. This road used to access a quarry now long abandoned and over grown. Aggregates for roads and other projects were mined here once. Now the wild has retaken the land. We have lunch on an old check dam, presumably there to enable easier stream crossings. Even at low stand the river is 2 feet deep where the road crosses. I understand that to be enough to flood some engines. I am guessing the equipment that uses this road now is able to clear it. (I haven't actually seen a vehicle on this road since the construction of a pipeline that ended a few years back. The crossing on which we lunch receives a good deal of foot traffic. I have personally always favored accessing the land where this road goes via Tierrasanta as there's less hill up and down, but maybe someday I'll do this road up along Suycott Wash.

Welcome to the San Diego River

Lunch time

a little lake behind the dam

reflections of the riparian forest.

wildflowers

Suycott wash and the trail to Fortuna West.

Now we continue up the river through lush forest, a cooling breeze at our backs. We are deep in conversation, the kind of talks that seem to require either long walks or mind altering substances. The former tends to be better if we actually want to remember what we're saying and there is much going on in the world. I find it takes a certain amount of time before I can really open up and just be. Usually the deep conversation is a sign that I am getting there, just not yet arrived. I keep worrying about the time as we have plans for the evening and a long way to go still.

Riparian forest

Looking int the heart

a jungle

I have done the visitor's center loop once or twice and driven, biked or hiked the entirety of the Junipero Serra trail; but never have I done the little connector trail from the loop to the road. Turns out to be an absolutely delightful section of trail, passing ancient live oak, and following a segment where the river babbles in and out of granite lined pools. We are now in the heart of Mission Gorge. These hills were once the magma chambers of a ancient volcanoes back maybe 100 million years ago when a massive subduction zone existed off the west coast and brought water to fuel magma formation. The center of volcanic activity moved around quite a bit over the eons, depending on age of subducting crust, availability of sediments (climate), and mantle circulation, sometimes far to the east sometimes a bit to the west. We are now easily out of the coastal plain / marine terraces and into what is known as the Peninsular Ranges that run from Palm springs all the way to the tip of Baja. I have still yet to figure out how old the river is. Rivers are often young, but typically young rives go around mountain ranges not through them. Up north there are a few examples of rivers that were once lakes until they broke through the mountain all at once, Lake Bonneville along the Utah / Idaho border and the Pajaro River near Gilroy and Watsonville both broke through mountain ranges. This gorge is very much the lowest way out of the basin just upstream, but how did it get here?

Poison oak

A lovely oak tree. There are many here

trees in the water

The San Diego River over the rocks

Getting there

A huge boulder where the trail rejoins the road

Returning to the Junipero Serra trail we are on a narrow tar road with one lane for cars and the other for hiker biker types. Kwaay Paay is rising up rapidly on the south, its rock faces covered with climbers of varying skill. South Fortuna on the north. The river rambling below. In this natural temple where the horizon is always close and the colors a bit brighter we grow silent and reverent at all above us and around. This is the one point on the hike where I can let my mind go quiet for awhile and be in loving silence with Anita.

Junipero Serra Trail / road through the heart of Mission Gorge.

South Fortuna in 3-D

Looking back from where hence we came. It has been a long journey.

I love the way the granite contrasts with blue sky

CLimbers on Kwaay Paay

Do you see the face here?

or here?

Junipero Serra Trail now descends.
One lane for cars, one for hiker biker types

Another face of south Fortuna

We are slowly leaving the heart for something different.

And the plains of Mission Valley seem so far away.

Can't get enough crystalline rock and blue sky.

Trees in winter.

The lush river.

We have come far.

Mission Gorge panorama

Mission Dam

At last we reach Mission Dam. This is the oldest feature of its kind in the state, the first "water project" to ensure year round water for Mission San Diego. A dam was built and flume constructed for many miles. There are a number of these sorts of flumes still to be found around the county most of which predate the massive dams of later times, though most are in disrepair, rendered obsolete by modern waterworks, their usable parts long scavenged.

Larger perspective on Mission Dam

A 3-D of how things used to be

Monument to the jerk who vandalized this

Crossing the river on the zig-zag bridge

Anita basking in the sun

We are now coming out of the heart of Mission Gorge and making our way into the grasslands at the outlet of the great bowl in which Santee and Lakeside find themselves. From a low rise we can now glimpse the land ahead. During a normal year this would be all be verdant green right now. It is very much not a normal year and as a consequence it is all still very dry. It is still lovely frolicking about the rare meadows we have. I just wish things were a bit greener.

looking downriver

The gorge in the golden hour

a pool of slack water

And we can now see a different kind of land, the Santee Valley

El Capitan and Cuyamaca: Guardians of the wild country.

Now in the grasslands east of the ridge

The grasslands are really feeling this drought

It is rare in southern california to find a place this flat that is undeveloped

You can almost see the curvature of the earth here.

North Fortuna is finally visible.

You can now see that the river descends quite a bit here.

Another crossing

Forest reflected

a touch of green and ripples

This used to be a place where live ammunition was used.

After a longer than expected time we find ourselves at Kumeyaay Lake campground availing ourselves to the facilities. Not alot of folks here today save for a few RV enthusiasts. One loop is all but closed it seems. I know for myself I want to be further away from the world, though were I biking out of the city this might make a nice stopover. The campground is named for a lake that occupies a former gravel quarry. Rivers have long served as natural sediment sorters and their deposits all prove quite useful. This one was exhausted some time in the 60's and is now an important refuge for wildlife. We had originally thought we'd go around the north side, but with time considerations, south is seeming wiser. We find out that dinner plans are cancelled and breathe a sigh of relief as we are not making very good time presently. Still there remain concerns about the sun going down.

This trip in particular has been interesting for the sense of time and space. We're on a different frame of time here in the river following its twists and turns, and occasionally backtracking. Today our journey is made richer by the myriad of environments we pass from one mile to the next. Always we want to linger more and yet there is a place we need to arrive at and soon.

East of the trail circling the lake the landscape has the feel of a place forgotten, still lovely, but less travelled, closer to the marginal land, the fence country. I recall in high school my friends and I used to go cruising around the new developments, sometimes going for miles with tract homes on one side and fenced undeveloped land on the other, the fence country, the transition zone, time and space will tell what does come.

Kumeyaay lake from the campground

Duck pairing

Lovers

The trail continues east and is a bit disused here.

Pyles and Cowles above a subdivision

A birdhouse in your soul

The vast gray area between the end of the park and the street

Donut!

Looking at the river

Art on the stream gauge

Route 52: we will be seeing a lot of this

Now welcome to the jungle

A wilderness of riparian lands below the highway. Trails not yet official here, but we used them anyway.

We rejoin the street for only a short bit while crossing the river. On the other side we spot a trail. Whereas earlier we may not have wandered such an unmarked path, we are bolder today and make our way under the 52 freeway. This is the true undiscovered country, where the 52 freeway is elevated high above the river and no signs tell you where to go - the shadows. The 52 freeway connects Santee and Lakeside with the rest of the county and the sea. As the crow flies we are something like 19 miles from the ocean, though it feels a world away. In summer Santee, by virtue of sitting in a low lying topographic bowl often experiences some of the hottest weather in the county at least west of Highway 79, as well as quite a bit of cool weather in the winter.
Today is still nice, but I know that daylight is limited and am not sure how we get from here to where we go next.

When in doubt follow the endless overpass

crossing a stream

a forgotten land

The complexity of the jungle grows upon us. There is evidence of herbicide use and some attempt at trail management, suggesting this may indeed become a park. There are plenty of bike tracks. there is also no shortage of encampments. I always feel awkward walking past the campsites / makeshift homes. It's like walking through someone's yard. I kinda feel like it would be rude to take pictures and so you don't see any here. Also I don't 100% trust the city to behave ethically with those who dwell here. I really wish I could. I wish the "system" could be trusted, and as part of it want to make it better, but I wonder if it ever "worked"

We make or way

More art on the support pillar

Forest reflected

It turns out that the river has 2 channels here, one which we didn't even recognize a river channel the other pictured below. I feel a bit like "Bridge to Terabithia" crossing this jungle of junk, except that that was kind of a sad story. Still it was one of my favorite and I think our world needs a more places for children to escape and create their momentary utopias.

As a teenager I had one of those in a flood control basin near my house in which I spent countless hours, at one point following the stream all the way to the ridge line. Now it's covered with tract homes. The freeway and frequency of floods should keep that from happening here, as well as the efforts of the San Diego River park foundation.

Crossing the river again

Anita follows

The highway meets the land

I keep thinking we want to be north,
but the trail is very much south

Here I am

getting more rugged less developed

Hello ducky

I think I startled him

Anita tries to capture their picture

The boulder at the beginning of a very wild land

Darkening sky and light decreasing. Rain maybe?

We are now deep into an area known by not so many. Sure there are locals fishing whatever may swim here, and the ever present encampments, but the trails seem less well worn now than they were before and they branch off into many directions, often dead ending at an encampment. Some of these are quite sophisticated. In case someone happens to be home I apologize for crossing their living room or what not, and were any residents around I would likely get a friendlier reply than one might get crossing through the back yards of one of the neighboring housing tracts. We need to be on the north side of the river I know, but there is no obvious crossing and not even much of an obvious trail. We eventually find a deadfall that looks as if it may suit our purposes and so give it a go. A fellow wanderer cheers us on as we use our entire bodies to hang on to the trees and work our feet over the shifting logs. This may be the most gnarly part of the whole trip.

The Ducks!

The river again

Where do we go from here?

On the north bank we find a dirt road running between the river bottom and the Carlton Oaks Golf course. It's not clear what the legal status is of us being here, but we can't exactly turn around. None of the golfers seem to mind anyway. We make quicker time now up the levee top encountering at least one other group of walkers, and grow more certain that this is indeed the right path. I also recall seeing some sort of developed trail not too far down the way when inspecting the maps.

After a harrowing crossing over a deadfall we reach the north bank

This looks like a trail

Carlton Oaks Golf course

The river jungle: wild as ever

Nice to be back on official trail again

The river trail through Santee is in excellent shape and getting better. I get the sense that much of the trail is quite new and that it would be even more popular if people knew about it. The line between human path and wild lands is more distinct, which is both reassuring and yet somehow makes the wild seem wilder. The animals are less disturbed. Subtle things that would be trampled have a chance to thrive. It's for the best when usage is high, though I do also know we need places where we can walk free, but perhaps not where the impact of doing so is less. Between here and Carlton Hills Boulevard we wander nearly alone past small lakes and deep dark woods as the light begins to dim. I wish we had arrived when there was still more light as the lushness would have come out better, but we enjoy what we have. The signs keep telling us this is "Mast Park West" though no such place exists on maps. It is nice anyway that it is here and a sign of progress.

Fences, obvious pathway, wildland looking healthier, this is good.

And it goes on and seems uncrowded.

It is getting late

Just the forest and us

A lake

Coots! Not to be confused with ducks!

So peaceful at the end of the day

Bliss

And the sun really is going beneath the horizon now

A nice bridge

We become silhouettes

Carlton Hills Drive

Murals under the bridge

The underpass below Carlton Hills Blvd, takes us into Mast park proper. This place feels a touch older, though very little in this town is particularly old. I understand it most as one of the east county suburbs where people can raise a family and have good schools and wide quiet streets; and all the amenities of the city without the hustle and bustle. I am happy to see this town celebrate its natural environment with such passion as they do with these trails and parks. Perhaps it is because they know more than many Southern Californians the importance and value of conserving water. The Santee lakes is an elaborate system of ponds an filtration basins that allows water to be recycled with a grace and beauty unparalleled and makes much better use of this scarce resource than many cities.
It is most definitely getting dark now but we are still graced with a little bit of light and so make our way through the forest and parkland.

I loved the colors here

And we make our way east through the winter grove as the sky catches fire

and what a fire it is

Whispy clouds of many flames over the winter grove

Hills now on the horizon

One more river crossing affords a moment of reflection

Our penultimate stop is on the last river crossing of today's walk. The sky has come alight with reds, violets, blues, grays and peaches. Even the tree silhouettes seem to be almost a fire. People are still out and about. A father son team smile at us, the son still unafraid of strangers, the father clearly aware that we are good people. We see also mothers with jogging strollers and lots of people with dogs. It is a delightful close to the day.
The trail along the south bank is fortunately well lit, winding along the back sides of strip malls and department stores and one stop shops that litter the landscape of downtown Santee. I notice they have given the river quite a bit of space, much more so than in Mission Valley, perhaps aware that this is good for everyone here. By the time we get across Cuyamaca street, it is quite dark and we are exhausted. We spot a trolley pulling into the station and quickly board it. It takes maybe 45 minutes to traverse what we have been wandering for 3-4 days. Perspective . . . .