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Arroyo Seco, June 2004

Suggestions If You Go

Indians Road: Walking the road at night is a unique experience and a great alternative to car hopping. It took us about 6 hours, including breaks, and we consumed about 2 liters of water each during our jaunt. The temperatures allowed us to walk comfortably in short sleeves and the road was also easy to follow, even when the moon went away and we only had headlamps. From Arroyo Seco, the road is generally level before dipping down to cross a concrete bridge over a creek that feeds into the Arroyo Seco. Then the road climbs continuously for many miles. You will know that you reach the summit when you encounter your first downhill section. The one major landslide is shortly after the summit and care should be exercised crossing it. I successfully carried my bike across it during the day however Mr. Woods slipped and fell while we were crossing it at night. After the slide the road goes gently up and down before reaching a long, flat stretch in which you encounter a downed sign indicating that you are in Hanging Valley. From there the road goes downhill, with one short uphill section, before reaching a gate in the road and then finally the Escondido Campground. Personally, I would not attempt to walk the road during the day due to the extreme temperature, complete lack of water, and minimal shade.

Henrik traced Indians Road from Arroyo Seco to Escondido using TOPO! and obtained the following values:

Distance, 13.3 miles
Elevation at Arroyo Seco, 936 feet
Elevation at Escondido, 2145 feet
Highest point on Indians Road, 2889 feet
Total Elevation Gain, 3427 feet
Total Elevation Drop, 2218 feet

Keeping Your Gear Dry: Most people I encountered on the river either put all of their gear in dry bags or carry large rafts to float their packs when required; however, I believe that trash compactor bags provide a more elegant solution. My pack is a G4 made by GVP Gear [www.GVPGear.com] and it is essentially are large, lightweight bag with shoulder straps. To keep my gear dry, I simply put it all inside a trash compactor bag, twisted the top, folded it over, and kept it shut with a rubber band. The advantage of this system is that you can use the external pockets of your pack for items that can get wet such as water bottles, underwater cameras, etc. The system is quite robust as well. In deep water I had multiple swimming options including: swimming while pushing the floating pack ahead of me, swimming the breaststroke with the pack still on my shoulders, and my favorite, heaving my belly onto the pack and swimming with my pack fully submerged while I was mostly out of the water. The system will obviously fail if the bag is punctured, so for that reason I was careful when scrambling and used two trash bags instead of one.

Gaining Access to Fort Hunter-Liggett: Access to Escondido through Fort Hunter-Liggett [www.liggett.army.mil] is still available despite our recent experience getting turned away on Memorial Day. I have called the base and found that access is available 24 hours a day and if an area is closed, it will only be for a few hours to allow for training exercises. Before a trip, you can call the base and get road closure conditions up to a week in advance. We plan to do this in the future and record who and when we spoke with. If the military police try to turn us away at the gate again we will say we talked to Commander Jones on June 20th, 2004 and he said that the road was open when we planned to travel through on June 26th, 2004. If that doesn't work we will either ask to speak to a commanding officer or wait for training exercises to finish.

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