Busted

I often rant about people doing things in Bulldog Canyon OHV area that they shouldn't be doing. Oh a couple of occasions I've argued with members of church groups that wanted me to let them in without a pass. People often leave the gates unlocked or wide open. I often feel like I'm cleaning up after a bunch of thoughtless and selfish teenagers. When I got to the Blue Point entrance yesterday, the gate was opened and nobody was around. I should have closed it, but I was fed up. I could just imagine the knuckleheads driving up as I closed it and b****ing at me for being a goody-two-shoes. So I just drove through. One time in about 7 years of going out there, I left the gate open. My first willful transgression. Half a mile later, I was pulled over. The officer was very polite and told me to close the gate even if I didn't open it, and that was that. So glad I didn't get banned from the area. Anyway, I'm not putting up with any more crap from the knuckleheads. If I'm going to get reprimanded for the one time I leave the gate open, then the next person to give me grief about closing the gate is going to be talking to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO). The next knucklehead I see tearing up the desert is going to have enough pictures and movies provided to the MCSO to net them a hefty fine. If I'm going to get pulled over for leaving one gate open once in 7 years, the real jerks are going to answer for their idiocy, and MCSO is going to get tired of hearing from me.

OK, enough of that.

I went out there because I wanted to do a little climbing and because I wanted to look for a stone arch that I thought I saw out there about 5 years ago. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly where I was when I saw it. That was before I had a GPS logger. I remember that I could not have gotten to the arch from where I was when I saw it, and I remember thinking I might be able to get to it from 10. I thought I could even see a faint trail near the arch. So I drove to where I thought I might be close to the arch and headed up the ridge.

I've always called this Dome Mountain, but I think Dome Mountain might actually be behind this.

The ridge looked suspiciously short, and I suspected I would see a much larger ridge behind it. I was right. I tried to get to the other ridge but it was too steep. I was sliding downhill.

When I got to the top of the ridge, I found a shady spot to cool off.

I tried going along here to get to the real ridge, but it was to steep to safely walk across.

As I was looking around and taking pictures, I realized that some pictures might not make sense to other people because they don't have any idea what direction I was facing. Well, I'm not sure it would help if they did know that, but I was in a convenient spot to make a 360 degree panorama, so I did that.

360 degree panorama from the short ridge.

As I drove out, I noted some other places to explore in the future. They don't look very accessible, though. It should be fun finding my way around out there. Click below for all of the pictures.

BC_2012_02_11