Today’s ride is an out and back covering a section S-2, a county highway that follows the historical route through the desert between Warner Springs and Ocotillo. Dating back to its use by the Spaniards in the 1700’s, it was later used as a Mexican mail route and then a stage route. It’s worth stopping to follow the link and read up on its colorful history as background for today’s ride.
Today I’m riding just the section between the small settlement of Shelter Valley (population 320) to just past Agua Caliente Park - just enough to get my daily 42 in. I should have shown this article to Rocky before the ride, because I’m sure she would have found its romantic lure irresistable. Instead, I showed her a route map for an organized group ride through here, with one spot labeled as ‘Very Steep Hill’. She looked at that, at the overall profile for the day’s ride, and the windy weather forecast, and decided she’d be fine with me going it alone while she stayed in the valley and rode out toward the Salton Sea and back again. She’ll wait to read about it in the blog, she said.
So, here’s the report. It’s a very nice ride, worth repeating some day. Southbound, it stair-steps its way south through a series of southward dipped valleys separated by steepish inclines. The road surface is a bit rough, but no more so than most of the roads down in Borrego Valley really. There’s no shoulder, but there’s not much traffic either - even on a Sunday afternoon, when campers and RVers make their way back to the coast from their weekend frolicking in the desert.
And it looks like this, Rocky:
Looking back north as I ride south from the village of Shelter Valley.
From the summit it’s a steepish drop through Box Canyon to the upper end of Mason Valley and Vallecito Wash, which we’ll follow for the rest of the ride south.
At the south end of Mason Valley I come to the drop-off I wondered about - the Campbell Grade, describe on one map I saw as ‘Very Steep Hill’. We’ll see how it feels on the return ride.
Looking up at Campbell Grade. Steep, but not terrible - 200 feet in a half mile, with the worst of it about 12%. Feels about like climbing up the west face of Gates Pass.
