Indianhead is a towering jagged face located a few miles west of Borrego Springs. Its rarely climbed. The signatures in the summit register indicated that no one had been up there for a month! We started the climb a little after 9am and summited in just over 4 hours.
The start of the climb involves a 2.3 mile walk through Palm Canyon. The first mile is a trail, then after a grove of palm trees its cross country and involves many stream crossings.
View of the "nose" of Indianhead from about a quarter mile into Palm Canyon
The Palm grove- This is where 99% of hikers stop.
We decided to start upwards at this unnamed ridge, which Im calling "cactus poke ridge."
For some unknown reason, ken decided not to follow the rest of us up the ridge (which was mainly class 3 with a few class 4 sections), and dropped down into a wash to the left of our ridge. He was going up the wash at a comfortable pace. What he didnt see (but what the rest of us saw) was the 30ft dry waterfall a few hundred meters ahead of him that would be almost impossible to get up without a rope. After about 5 minutes of hollering back and forth, he ended up heading towards the left of the dry waterfall and hoped that his route would work.
Ken can be seen climbing on the left side of that big rock
Soon came the point where our ridge intersected the main Indianhead Ridge. We were less than 15 minutes from the summit. All remaining climbing was very easy. The ridge was heavily burnt, and it looked recent. Maybe a recent lightning strike or something.
View from the summit
That lower peak in the picture is Goodview Peak, only a few hundred feet lower than Indianhead. The city is Borrego Springs.
Mt. San Jacinto can be seen in the distance
After 30 minutes on the summit Ken still didnt show up. He had only a few hundred feet to climb when we last saw him. I figured that he either ended up getting stuck somewhere near the top of the wash or got tired and decided to wait for us at the ridge intersection. Right when we started descending, Ken popped onto the summit plateau huffing and puffing. He got about 4 minutes on the summit and then we had to descend fast.
We took the easy but longer way down, descending about a mile along the main ridge, then turning a sharp left to descend on a class 2 ridge locally known as "Schadd Ridge."
Descending Schadd Ridge - LOTS of scree
View of Knob Peak about half a mile before the bottom of the ridge.
The ridge ended up more than a mile further up Palm Canyon than the start of Cactus Poke Ridge. It was a 2 hour scramble through the canyon to get get back to the trailhead.
The next day starting before sunrise I decided to climb up the South Ridge of Indianhead to see if I could find any bighorn sheep. Around 2,500ft I looked up and there was one staring at me at about 10ft away. I circled it for about 15 minutes taking pictures.
views while descending the south ridge
