Split Mountain West
Split Mountain is a remote desert peak in Anza-Borrego State Park in Southern California. It is also on the Sierra Club San Diego Peak List (#90). The area used to be an ancient seabed. Most of the rock is sandstone and mudstone, with chunks of embedded granite here and there. To get there, take Split Mountain Road south from Ocotillo Wells, then 4 miles down the Fish Creek Wash dirt road. 4x4 recommended.
Getting to the top of the mountain starts by dropping into a major wash. The topo map is not as useful here where smooth 40' contour lines hide 30' cliffs. I followed the wash a little more than a mile before I reached a three way fork. I continued straight up and over a small rise to drop into another wash with high, pock marked walls on the right. I hugged the wall until I reached another fork. This time, I went left and climbed steeply out of the wash.
Eventually, I dropped into a shallow gully and started directly toward the highest summit. From this side, the summit presented a wall. You can go around to the other side for an easy walk up. Instead, I found a class 2 move to get me to a ledge, then followed it away from the summit to a point where a 3' step got me onto the summit plateau. The standard double red cans held the register. There were two register books. The first was placed in 1993 by Wes Shelberg and Paul Frieman. It was only about half full with the most recent entry from March, 2016. The other register was empty. Wes Shelberg had actually used a surveyors level instrument to verify that this location was higher than the other ridge. After a short break, I visited the lower half of the double peak which had better views of the entry to Fish Creek Wash. I headed back toward the ridge I came up, but decided to try to descend the wash from a higher point than where I left it. It didn't work out quite as I expected and I ended up going down a feeder wash that required some trickier down climbing to get back on my ascent route. That just hammered home the potential navigation issues. This is a fascinating area with alien geology.
