Charouleau Gap, March 23-24, 2002
Jack Knight (Leader), Pat Neveau, Mike Curtis (Chelsea & Sarah), Lee Love & Linda. In spite of all efforts, this turned out to be only a four-vehicle trip, but at least this meant that we were able to move fairly quickly. We left the Florence Junction Texaco station at 9.15 am, regrouped at the Chevron station in Catalina and were on the trail about 10:30 am. Just as in our first trip, there was absolutely no water in the rocky stream bed, except for an isolated pool known as the Car Wash when the stream is flowing, but which was now only 6” deep. Lee was driving the Pinzgauer, and Mike had a new stock Grand Cherokee without lift or lockers. Everyone made it through without incident. We reached Coronado Camp at about 2:30 pm and camped nearby along the edge of the dry stream course. It looks as though someone tried to restore the adobe building at the camp using shiny new corrugated iron roofing, but somehow most of the rafters have been burned away. Since it was fairly windy, the roofing flapped in the breeze with a noise like thunder, but fortunately the wind died down in the early evening and we didn’t have to listen to that all night. Next morning we packed up and left by 9:30 am, and everyone drove down the steep shelving by-pass around the Step, without taking the time to play around with winches, etc. Once past the last piece of rocky stream bed, the character of the trail changes totally, and consists of a series of very steep hill-climbs and descents into sandy washes, followed by some very eroded and deeply gullied sections, and we finally arrived at Oracle at about 2:00 pm.
|
|
