Rockhouse Canyon / Toro Peak BackPack Trip - ABDSP

Gary invited Randy and I out to explore some more of Rockhouse Canyon over a 4-1/2 day trip. No real agenda, just explore and enjoy the desert...plans were extremely flexible. We hiked out at night after work in the dark and camped out the first night on some low benches at the mouth of Rockhouse Canyon. The next day we explored some side canyons and ridges of the Santa Rosa Ridgeline.

There are some great views of Rockhouse Canyon from above, here is a view of Buck Ridge and the valley from a ridge near the "necklace" vein.



On the way up the ridge Gary saw this large lizard, I am pretty sure it is a Baja California Collard Lizard


We made our way over to Box Spring and had some lunch under the shade of the trees near the spring. The spring was not currently a good source of water since previous repair work had deteriorated and only thin surface water was available. Using some materials left from prior repairs I made an effort to get the spring back to usable order. Gary and Randy helped out by supplying the rocks. If anybody goes out there after reading this please let me know how it is doing. Hopefully the animals will not kick it all over.

Here is the spring before I made repairs


Here is the spring after repairs


There was quite a bit of insect wildlife down around the water, I especially liked all the Damselflies. Here is a Male Bluet Damselfly


This one was sharing a branch with some type of beetle


Here a male and female are mating


We spent the second night at the Old Santa Rosa Village ruins. The lowest rock house at the village had a gate keeper there waiting for us


We stayed in the upper rock houses and enjoyed some great views of the valley and a colorful sunset


As might as I tried I could not get my new Canon Powershot S100 to take good long exposure pictures, even with the CHDK scripts. This is a night shot of Rockhouse Canyon with Clark Dry Lake and probably Ocotillo Wells in the far distance


Most of the wildflower blooms in the lower elevations were done but as we continued to climb higher towards the Cottonwoods we started seeing lots of new blooms. At around the 4,000' level many of the wildflowers were still blooming like this Purple Prickly Pear Cactus


Something I noticed on many of the agave stalks and am still researching is what looked like hundreds of pupae type skins that had been shed in small holes in the stalks. Anybody know more about this?


Exploring up another unnamed drainage near the base of Toro Peak we found some old historic debris and had a great view of Buck Ridge



After a long day we finally reached the Cottonwoods and upper rock house ruins where we spent the third night. It was getting windy and cloudy and rain was in the forecast. We didn't get any rain that night but the morning clouds made for a brilliant sunrise


On the third day we climbed up to Toro Peak from the Cottonwoods. It was a long climb and the weather was getting cold and windy. From the Cottonwoods we climbed straight up the ridgeline to the Alta Seca Bench area. This is quite a change from the desert terrain below, it is much more of a forest at the 8,000' elevations


Lots of these Snow Plants were popping up out of the ground


After almost 4 hours of climbing we got to the top of Toro Peak. It was very cloudy, super windy and we were getting some light snow falling on us. We checked out the towers and surrounding views of Rockhouse Canyon, Pinyon Flat and the Cochella Valley. Not the clearest day but great views anyway.


Looking down into Rockhouse Canyon from Toro Peak


On the way back down to the Cottonwoods we saw a nice Gopher snake, maybe 4' or so


Knowing it was going to start raining we decided to hike down to the lower elevations of Rockhouse Canyon so after getting back down from Toro Peak we put our packs on and hiked down towards the lower ruins and camped out for our fourth night. We got some light drizzle overnight and the next morning but nothing too bad. We were treated to a nice double rainbow in the wash we camped out in


Here is a morning shot of Dawns Peak covered by a cloud bank and peak 6300 to the left


On the last day out we decided to go explore the upper ridge areas above the Corps BM. There are some spectacular open valleys up there. You could easily spend days just exploring there. Here is just one view of those upper ridges looking towards Clark Dry Lake


Gary knew where some old pot sherds were


Total Mylar Balloons this trip - 6