guest wrote:Hi Revan,
Leatherneck is a great challenge, (been many years for me).
Another possibility, is what I believe used to be called the Gordon trail, (it was almost completely gone when I did it 20 yrs ago). It leaves above the private community of Club Andreas , (you'll need to avoid their land, so topo would be important),, which is just before entering Indian Cyns. Most likely an old route for natives to access the mtns for acorns & other food & animals.
Since the Mt. fire, there may be less brush, but anything on the north sides will be very tough, especially in the manzanita, (we we're able to work our way through pretty well). We topped out just south of Carumba, (since we knew we couldn't get across that huge drainage coming out of that area. A real grind, then you still have to go up another 2k to the tram.
Since you'd spend more time attempting to locate a very old trail, (if anything is left), would be better to survey the area, see where heavy brush & drainage's are, etc.
ss
Wow, this post sent me on a deep dive into the Gordon trail, including reading the
Gordon Trail Redux thread, and several chapters of
Our Araby which was cited in that thread.
How legal is it to try to hike this? You say bring a topo map to avoid their land, but based on my research that would be pretty impossible. Their holdings overlap much of Andreas Canyon, so is there is some sort of easement or agreement that allows access to visitors via the toll road? *see edit
Based on this
Agua Caliente master plan document, the Andreas Canyon club holds 2200+ acres of land in that area.
Here's a map from that document showing the land boundaries. The top of the map is cut off where you can see where you see there is more land to be accounted for. The land pictured equals just under 2000 acres.
And finally,
here it is plotted on CalTopo.
EDIT: I see looking over the map again that at no point do you cross Andreas Canyon Club land when accessing the canyon via the Indian Canyons toll road (which I thought you did for some reason). I haven't been there in years, but I wonder if there are "no trespassing" signs if you wander farther down the canyon.