02-Jan-2005 -- A year ago, I had made a quick unsuccessful attempt at this confluence. After finding an impassible washed out road and discovering that the other roads to the south had no trespassing signs on them, I resolved to instead visit 35n-120w and return to this confluence another time.

There were low clouds and rain when I left my house for this attempt. Southern California has had an extremely wet few weeks recently and I hoped that the mountains south and west of the confluence would hold back the rain for our visit. My friend Todd from work came along for the adventure.

Our plan was to stop at the washed out road caused by Tecuya Creek at N34 59.474 W118 57.167 and then carry our mountain bikes to the other side and then simply ride the 3 miles to the confluence. The ditch is about 15-20 feet deep and was surprisingly dry. We found a way down and back up to the other side and began our ride. Along the way we passed a variety of abandoned and still operating oil field equipment as well as lots of cows. We crossed the aqueduct and then made a right turn towards the confluence. We left our bikes along the dirt road with about 200 meters to go. We climbed up a fairly steep hill that eventually flattened out as we approached the confluence. The confluence dance was fairly straight forward, complicated only by multiple receivers.

Picture #1 looks east out towards Interstate 5. At the Laval exit, there are lots of gas stations and fast food restaurants that were packed with people returning from their New Year travels. The large buildings at the far right are the IKEA Distribution Center. Just south of this complex is where I-5 goes up through the Tejon Pass. Picture #2 looks south towards the Pleito Hills and San Emigdio Mountains. Picture #3 looks west with Wheeler Ridge on the right. Picture #4 looks across a very deep ravine and shows the top of Wheeler Ridge. Picture #5 shows an almost perfect instantaneous reading from three receivers. Zeroing out a single receiver is easy. I’m beginning to think each additional receiver requires an exponential function of time to zero them all out!

The trip back consisted of coasting 450’downhill back to my Eurovan. Round trip numbers were 6.16 miles in 1:12.

For future visitors, if you continue northbound on the frontage road west of I-5, you can turn left at N35 00.387 W118 57.156 into what looks like a storage area for some of the oil well equipment. That’s where we turned around thinking we were going in the wrong direction but had we continued just a bit farther, we would have discovered another road to turn left onto at N35 00.507 W118 57.412 that is clearly shown on TerraServer imagery and Garmin Mapsource Topo. This road eventually intersects with the road we were on at N34 59.513 W118 57.473 and (I bet) is most likely the road discovered by the first visitors.

Another successful confluence adventure!