Anza Borrego in mid-November

There are few trails in Anza Borrego. It is mostly cross country hiking. Usually in November the only water is along Coyote Creek. Check with the rangers for current conditions.

If you click the link in my profile, then click on Backpacking, then Trip Reports there are a couple trips in this area. No 4WD needed.

I think there's usually water in Borrego Palm Canyon. I was way up in there January of this year and there were a number of really nice spots to camp past where the trail peters outs. There was running water. I did a trip up Indianhead and came down a gully and met up with the main creek near where the 'P' in Palm Canyon is on the USGS 7.5' topo and followed it out. It looked like things get moved around a lot in there during storms though, so those nice spots may not be there anymore.

I wonder if it's possible to follow North Fork Borrego Palm Canyon all the way up to Palm Mesa to Indian Canyon and out to Collins Valley where Coyote Creek is.

I've also seen a trip report of an overnighter through Moonlight Canyon into the Inner Pasture. This is south of Borrego Springs near Agua Caliente. Not sure about water though.

"I wonder if it's possible to follow North Fork Borrego Palm Canyon all the way up to Palm Mesa to Indian Canyon and out to Collins Valley where Coyote Creek is"

Well, yes and sort of.

First off, the last place you want to be during a winter rain storm is in the upper reaches of Borrego Palm Canyon.

But yes, you can hike up out of the canyon. Very strenuous. Loops can be done via Indian, Cougar, Sheep, or Salvatore Canyons. All require difficult bushwhacking to get down and it is steep, about 3,000 feet if I remember correctly.

The best and longest route is to go all the way to Alder Canyon and then down, and that isn't easy.

But up high in November it is probably going to drop below freezing and snow is not uncommon. If you get a map, any trails you might see up high are not really there any more. So any of these routes are going to require some excellent navigation skills. Not recommended, and why I have never posted trip reports for these hikes.

Thanks for the advice. There is not a lot of information out there on backpacking in the area. I've been considering a few different trips. I don't have any experience cross-country backpacking, but I have done a bit of cross country day hiking. I've been looking for good topo maps online. It's not clear which ones are actually good enough for navigation as opposed to showing me where the 4WD roads are. What do you use?

I normally use USGS maps, which can be downloaded for free as PDF. Places like Staples can usually print them full size. Sometimes I use the old Topo! Program for areas I hike a lot.

Deserts can be unforgiving, so don't get in over your head.

I find myself using caltopo.com a lot. You can view the usgs 7.5' topos, forest service, satellite, and some other ones and layer them on each other if you wanted that. It also allows you to generate a PDF for printing. You can also plot a route and it will calculate the distance and elevation difference.

I mainly like it because I can move seamlessly between areas. Especially useful if I'm looking for ideas and for wasting time daydreaming about possible future trips.

Nick, thanks for the Indian canyon/Alder Canyon tip. After thinking about it more, it seems like one of those hikes where the work factor would substantially outweigh the fun factor.

Here is what I'm thinking, to be done in 2 days. I'm a bit apprehensive since I don't know the area at all, and I'm accustomed to neither desert hiking nor cross country, so I'm hoping for a minimum of route finding.

Climb over Alcoholic Pass to Clark Valley, go up Rockhouse Canyon to Jackass Flat, then climb up to White Wash and camp there.

The following day, loop down to Horse Canyon and then follow Coyote Canyon back.

Is this do-able? I estimate around 30 – 35 miles total.

You'll like the hike from Alcoholic Pass through Rockhouse Canyon, although I would take Butler Canyon to Jackass Flat because I plain love to hike Butler. The most difficult route finding will be Jackass to White Wash to Horse Canyon and down. I'm not a GPS person, but in your case I would definitely recommend one. As long as you don't get lost once you get to Jackass Flat it will be a great trip. Good chance you will see some bighorn, so take a camera!

Kiel,

Those side canyons are really great hiking. Very few people. Maybe Sheep or Salvadore and then to Alder and back would be a good tune-up for a hike starting at Borrego Palm. Borrego Palm to Alder and back is well worth the "work" and the fun will be there in large quantities.

We completed the trip. We're not entirely sure what happened, but we think that we went up a canyon just east of Butler. It became increasingly steep and a very strenuous scramble. We climbed the wall of the canyon to get a good look and identified Jackass Flat and traveled along the top of the ridge towards it, which was actually nice. I love getting up to high altitude. We found Jackass Flat and then followed it north. Somehow, we ended up in Box Canyon and thought we were in White Wash and then Horse Canyon. We then followed it down and realized that we ended up at the Lower Willows. We camped there. We then walked up the road to Middle Willows and back down, which was a lot tougher than anticipated since it was soft sand. We had a GPS but really tried to avoid using it since we were pretty sure we could never get so lost that we couldn't find our way back. My navigation skills definitely need a bit of work… Overall, it was a fun trip, although I realize that my trail runners are a really bad idea for desert cross country travel.

Since the last trip ended up completely off route, we attempted the route again on the weekend of 2/28/15.

Last time, we attempted to travel cross country to Butler Canyon by going pretty much due east and couldn't find it. We ended up going up the wrong canyon. This time, we went southeast until we found the road that ran through Clark Dry Lake and went up the road. It would have been very hard to find Butler Canyon otherwise. The climb up Butler Canyon was uneventful although we did accidentally take a few wrong turns down some side canyons before getting to Jackass Flat. We eventually made it to Jackass Flat with some reassurance from GPS. From there, we ascended Dry Wash and navigation definitely became trickier. We used GPS pretty extensively as we ascended Dry Wash since there were several side canyons. Navigation would have been much harder without GPS.

The ascent to the pass felt much longer than it looked on the map. We were hopeful to make it White Wash by evening but ran out of daylight and camped on the climb upwards. It started to rain that night and continued to rain the entire next day. We ascended up quite a bit and found White Wash without any problem, although we did accidentally climb the wrong wash and end up with a dizzying cliff view of White Wash. The descent into Coyote Canyon was relatively easy aside from the rain. The Middle Willows was completely flooded, and we ended up hiking in up to a foot of flowing water. Overall, it was a very challenging trip, far more challenging than I initially anticipated. Total mileage was about 43 miles.