20120304 Schvaterfall Cyn First Descent - 300ft'er!!!!

Post by **Taco** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:26 pm

Amanda and I just got back from doing the first descent of a previously un-named canyon that drains into Bichota Canyon near Rattlesnake Peak. It was relatively tough, with lots of bushwhacking. The rating is somewhere around 4BIV. The 4 is for the multistage rapp, as well as the fun anchors (rock pinch, rock pile/deadman). It might be a class C instead of B, but I dunno. Splitting hairs... it's a wet canyon and you could swim in it, but we didn't so I just figure whatever. The rating is a general guide, not a rule. ANywho... so there was a 300ft or so waterfall! We did it in two stages, 170ft on R1 and 150ft on R2. Anchor was 20ft back on R1 so it's right at about 300ft. The pics are great.

Enjoy them pics yo.

Looking down the canyon from the dropin

First couple rapps and a pool

Cool rapp

Some of the easier bushwhacking

Getting slottier

Stage 1 of the 300ft'er

Amanda descending stage 1

MONSTER Poison Oak

Looking down the 2nd stage

2nd stage

Next rapp into a pool

Nice little spot

Terrible rapp that pissed me off. I was literally covered in those stinking biting ants and the rope was threatening to get all caught up in the dead stuff at the bottom. Went better than expected.

Outta here!

3hr hike out Bichota Canyon

A new friend!

Found this before hiking onto R39.

Here's a massive Acme Mapper link...
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.27243,-11 ... River%20CA

A is the start of 2n15 or whatever that you hike up to reach the drop in (B). C is the end... D is the end of Bichota Cyn, and E is the car!

Seeya

lilbitmo · Post by **lilbitmo** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:29 pm

Nice work Amanda and Taco - looks like another fun outing, had I not been extremely tired from the previous three days I would have found a way to make it work but I needed a down day.

MPO may become a new lexicon for me - Massive Poison Oak, I need that like a sharp stick in the eye - the second one sounds less painful for me

Nice waterfalls - great pictures

Max Falcon · Post by **Max Falcon** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:05 am

Haha, it was a loooong day for sure. We missed our machete bro! No signs of PO yet, keeping fingers crossed. :/

AW~ · Post by **AW~** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:39 am

Excellent waterfall....nice flow for this drought season too. me thinks you hit the jackpot in terms of finding a nice SG waterfall amidst jungle bushwhacking.

So strange you found that doll. Wasn't Bichota the start of the curve fire and 'they' said it was set by some devil cult? There be the smoking gun?

cougarmagic · Post by **cougarmagic** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:53 am

Cool canyon! The name cracks me up.

Does anyone know what the calcified fern formations are called? If it were limestone, it would be called travertine. (Limestone - don't take it for granite.

)

But really - is there a specific term for this? It doesn't occur very much in the SGs.

longcut · Post by **longcut** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:06 pm

really, really cool.

rios · Post by **rios** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:31 pm

The statue you guys found is "Santa Muerte"

PackerGreg · Post by **PackerGreg** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 2:20 pm

There must have been some sort of civilization near the head of that canyon because of all the Eupatoria. Cool to see that Horsetail Rush in there!

Post by **Taco** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:54 pm

PackerGreg wrote: ↑There must have been some sort of civilization near the head of that canyon because of all the Eupatoria. Cool to see that Horsetail Rush in there!

There are a bunch of foundations and chimneys there - remnants of a buncha houses burned in the 2002 Curve Fire.

Burchey · Post by **Burchey** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:54 am

Nice work MANG

Post by **Taco** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 11:55 am

Burchey wrote: ↑Nice work MANG

fo rizzle dawg

carl swindle · Post by **carl swindle** » Tue Jun 11, 2024 7:50 pm

How was the final descent into the canyon? Do you think it's worth bushwhacking up to from below? I made it ~2.5 miles up Bichota Canyon "trail" last summer if you can even call it that, and It took a lot longer than I thought it would. Are any of the waterfalls back there worth exploring? I may try again, but set aside more time. I think there was a freak rainstorm when I did it too, which made it arguably worse.

Post by **Taco** » Wed Jun 12, 2024 8:45 pm

Maybe. I think the bushwhacking at the bottom of the canyon was really bad. I don't think it would be worth it at all.

carl swindle · Post by **carl swindle** » Wed Jun 12, 2024 11:46 pm

Thanks, maybe I'll save if for a day I really feel like suffering or something. This looked promising on google maps (34.27474894994771,-117.80825810460604) and this (34.274390605735995,-117.81425576156533), which is where I think you went down. I remember seeing a bunch of water flowing on the pigeon ridge fire road ~5 miles out over the summer in the middle of a drought year a couple of years ago, so I expect that there will be a lot of water now.

Post by **Taco** » Thu Jun 13, 2024 9:56 pm

carl swindle wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2024 11:46 pm Thanks, maybe I'll save if for a day I really feel like suffering or something. This looked promising on google maps (34.27474894994771,-117.80825810460604) and this (34.274390605735995,-117.81425576156533), which is where I think you went down. I remember seeing a bunch of water flowing on the pigeon ridge fire road ~5 miles out over the summer in the middle of a drought year a couple of years ago, so I expect that there will be a lot of water now.

The first set of coords looks cool on GE but in person isn't as impressive. I checked it out from above when Dima, Danny, and I hiked up through the area.

The second set of coords is the bottom of the big waterfall. I don't recall if we dropped in near where the road crosses the canyon or not. Usually we try to drop in as high as possible unless it's clear that there are no technical challenges there.

carl swindle · Post by **carl swindle** » Fri Jun 14, 2024 5:18 pm

Thanks, whenever I do this, I'll aim for at least the spot with the big waterfall, and maybe the second depending on how overgrown it is.

Post by **dima** » Fri Jun 14, 2024 5:37 pm

A public-service announcement! I just added a custom bbcode to make latlon pairs into clickable links that route to caltopo. So if instead of typing

Code: Select all

34.123,-118.456

you can type

Code: Select all

[latlon=34.123,-118.456]

And you get this: 34.123,-118.456. Clicking shows the link in caltopo, with some hard-coded zoom level and layer selection. The point in question is at the center of the map, without any marker, unfortunately. But it's better than nothing!

Carl: I updated your post above to use this.

Post by **Sean** » Sat Jun 15, 2024 3:53 pm

dima wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2024 5:37 pm A public-service announcement! I just added a custom bbcode to make latlon pairs into clickable links that route to caltopo.

Could you repeat this info to the Admin & Tech Support forum? Pretty neat. Thanks.