Daren Sefcik: The Impossible Railroad & Carrizo Gorge Solo Backpack

Spent a few days hiking and backpacking around Jacumba and Carrizo Gorge with an emphasis on trying to find some of the old railroad construction camps. Inspired by the book The Impossible Railroad I backpacked out into the Gorge battling the Tamarisk and ticks and found several of the camps, train wreckage, historic artifacts and even more interest in this fascinating story of a railway that was jinxed from the beginning. I encourage you to read this book if you want to learn more about the history and see many unpublished photos of the railroad as it progressed from 1919 to our present day fiasco it still is.

I will post some of my favorite photos of the trip here but you can see many more in my photo gallery here

The railroad tracks are completely blocked off as of 02-14-2015 at the De Anza resort. The old train cars that have been off to the side for years have been pulled up onto the tracks completely blocking access to railway vehicles. You can see in this picture that whatever large vehicle it took to move those rail cars have dented and smashed down the actual tracks. The picture is deceiving, it looks like the rail car is on the tracks normally but they are actually laid cross wise on the tracks, like a big tractor or such just dragged them up and onto the tracks at an angle.

Tracks are closed off near De Anza resort. Tracks are also looking pretty smashed up from whatever vehicle was used to move that rail car onto the tracks

Young & Crooks Camp 1 down in the gorge

Most of the construction sites built up tiered foundations on the hillsides. They were very elaborate and quite impressive

Debris from the construction camp

The May 1965 derailed Coors Beer trailer

Coors Beer Trailer that derailed in May 1965

The wheels wedged into a dry fall

I found several small rooms dug into the hillsides that must have served as offices or temporary shelters

Or perhaps they were the supply rooms for the important stuff

Plenty of beautiful blooms starting to happen now

Cleveland's Beardtongue, Penstemon clevelandii

Most of the tunnel bypass roads were clear but some had landslide debris covering them or worse cholla land mines, this one I did not win, I took heavy casualties, even my hiking pole got several stuck on it!