#1: [19-Mar-01] (incomplete)

05-Jan-2002 -- This confluence is a noticeable distance from the closest highway, U.S. 385. I reached the only obvious access point -- about 10.5 km south of Marathon -- about 9am. My GPS unit reported I was 27 km from the confluence. This access point is a gated gravel road. The "Preserving Land and Resources Through Private Ownership" part of the sign on the gate implied one could drive on in. Which I did, after opening then closing the gate. Although the road was wide and obviously maintained it was slow going as stretches were either very loose gravel or had ridges that would really shake the car if I drove too fast. After about 1.5 hours, one 4 km backtrack, two cows, and another gate, I came to a gate that was locked. I was 5 km from the confluence. Backtracking a few tenths of km I turned onto a narrow road that was not much more than a track through the wilderness that headed in the right direction. I didn't get very far before I came to a wash that I simply wasn't going to drive over in my car. So it was back to the main gravel road. Hmmm, 4.7 km south of the point. Before I could talk myself out of it, I quickly set off on foot down the smaller road with my GPS and camera. The wind that had been around all morning was still present. I was continuously using my GPS unit to guide me until it warned me that battery power was getting low. So I turned it off and only turned it on briefly at intervals to make sure I was still headed in the right direction. The nearly treeless terrain was hilly but not too bad, the real problem was the thorny bushes that were everywhere.

After a 1 hour 20 min hike, going over a barbed wire fence, steering clear of a wild pig, and a climb up and down a steep ridge I finally approached the confluence. Zeroing in, I found the confluence just east of another fence. It was on the side of another ridge. The first four pictures are views looking south, west, north, and east respectively from the confluence. The west view (#2) is looking up the steep ridge I climbed over. The south view (#1) is obviously the best. My car is directly behind the hill at the far right of this picture. The fifth picture is of my GPS unit at the confluence. The sixth and last picture is looking back at the confluence after I started the hike back to my car. The confluence is in the background in the middle of the darker part of the hillside in the center of the picture. Since I knew where my car was I was able to take a more direct route back to it (and avoid the steep ridge climb). At about 2:30pm I was back on U.S. 385. A 5.5 hour journey. But quite memorable.