SoCal Overland Navigation Practice Hike Suggestions

Ive struggled with this same issue before. For the beginner, it's easy to find areas to practice, but not so if you are fairly competent and live in Socal. Do you have a GPS or Smartphone with GPS? If so, you might consider creating your own "points of interest" by marking waypoints and challenging yourself to go and find them. Use your device to mark your targets and to see how close you came, but dont use it to actually navigate to them. Dont follow the obvious route straight up that wash or along the base of the hill. Instead, plan a route to it which will come at it from a weird angle. Another idea is to pull out your topo of Anza Borrego and come up with your own creative but short loop. This will force you to interpret the map in a very detailed way and test your ability judge which drainages are crossable, which contours should be followed instead of just dropping down and following the wash, etc. Make notes for yourself such as "from this point on my route, i should be able to look directly east between the hills and see the road", etc. The you would go out with your map and all your notes and see how close you came. just some ideas. using these kinds of tricks, you might be able to squeeze more practice per outing because you will be creating yourself a high concentration of "tests" on each hike and still be done early enough to beat the heat. have fun!

There's an area of Anza Borrego near the tiny community of Ranchita on the north side of S22 that has a number of bumps and hills that have benchmarks. Most of them are on the SDC100 List. I found it challenging to navigate to the exact BMs I was shooting for because they can be very close together and not super prominent. Some that come to mind in the area are Bonny, Hut, Wee, White, Ysidro, Goat, Hob, Tuck, Webo. I'm by no means a master navigator so maybe that would be too easy for you.

I did a 2 day trip in Anza Borrego which may be something to consider. It was cross country and very challenging from a navigation standpoint and also very physically challenging given the mileage and desert terrain. It was very easy to follow over Alcoholic Pass and Butler Canyon but navigating after that was quite difficult without a GPS. Once you find White Wash, it’s mostly road back.