This is the Trail Report, a weekly email newsletter from reporter Maura Fox about hikes and San Diego County’s outdoors. Sign up to get it in your inbox first.
After a rainy and stormy last few days, it feels fitting to hike in Rainbow Canyon.
It’s a colorful desert pass in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park — teeming with life, especially this time of year when wildflowers are just starting to show off. In fact, I bet the vegetation and wildflowers are blooming even brighter now, following the recent rains.
The canyon is also known for its metamorphic rock, the kind that features layers of different colors and textures. On my hike, I saw one groove in a boulder that looked so much like a snake that I would have believed if you told me it was a fossil.
Compared to last week’s hike up Anza-Borrego’s Whale Peak, this one is a lot easier. But it still features some technical hiking. There are nearly a dozen dry waterfalls you get to climb along the 5-mile out-and-back hike — and you just have to accept that you might slip at least once on the way down. Wear sturdy shoes and thick pants, just in case.
The trailhead is located surreptitiously off California Highway S2, a route used — among many things — as a mail route in the 19th century. It was such a beautiful drive to the trailhead from my campground at Vallecito County Park, which was actually itself once a staging station along the Butterfield Overland Mail Route.
I couldn’t help but think about the stagecoaches that rumbled along the rugged terrain for days on end. Was the scenery less beautiful and more monotonous to those folks, or did they still admire the never-ending desert from within their rattling wooden transport?
I hope they enjoyed it, but I can understand if they didn’t. After all, I got to go watch the Super Bowl at a burger joint in Borrego Springs after my hike through Rainbow Canyon.
I’d recommend a desert hike soon in the next month or two, before the temperature starts to tick up.
Beyond hiking, I’m thinking about the group of backcountry skiers who died this week in an avalanche near Lake Tahoe. It was the country’s deadliest avalanche in nearly half a century, and authorities said the skiers had little time to react. The tragedy is a reminder of the risks we take when we venture outdoors, especially in the winter when weather can change quickly.
Back in Southern California, a photographer is on a mission to document hundreds of species of native bees, which are at risk due to climate change and habitat loss. Her work even took her to Anza-Borrego. Come for the story, stay for the close-up photos of bees and our local desert.
Have a great, safe week.
—Maura
Hike of the week: Rainbow Canyon lives up to its name as a colorful destination in Anza-Borrego
8 backcountry skiers found dead and 1 still missing after California avalanche
Hike of the week: Admire Anza-Borrego from above and below on the climb to Whale Peak
A California photographer is on a quest to photograph hundreds of native bees
Sequencing work at San Diego’s Frozen Zoo expected to ‘dramatically expand’ science of conservation
To aficionados, fungi are freaky, mystical and overlooked. They’re helping scientists learn more