During our drive home from Death Valley just before the New Year, Lee and I hatched a plan to hike to the top of Rabbit Peak. I had been reading about this "elusive desert Rabbit" for literally 25 years, since I first bought my copy of John Robinson. From all accounts, a single-day frontal assault on the mountain appeared to be beyond my capabilities (or at least my pain threshold), but an overnight via Villager Peak seemed doable.
So I came on here in January looking for more information about the hike. A search revealed little, but after I posted this thread in early January, Kathy and Hal came forward with a wealth of valuable advice. It was so complete and detailed that I felt empowered to simply drive out to Anza-Borrego the following weekend and attempt a day hike to Villager.
I was turned back by weather on that trip, about two miles below Villager, but I got a good taste of what the hike would be about. I posted an event on the OCHBC site and waited with some anxiety for the date of my first backpacking trip in ten years to come around. In the meantime, several others, including Travis Linds, had reported on their own Rabbit ascents.
The Day
Eight of us were to meet at the highway trailhead at 9:00. There was some confusion with the eighth member, who stayed with me in Borrego Springs (we watched a slide show there by Jerry Schad the night before), which caused us to delay our start (without him) until almost 10:00. The day was perfect, sunny and cool with high clouds that shielded us from the worst of the sun throughout the trip.
Funny thing about this sport; except for Lee and Bill, all of the members of the party were strangers to me, and to each other. Yet somehow we automatically put aside the suspicions of urban society to spend a fairly intimate weekend together in the wilderness.
Basically this hike is simply a long walk up a rocky desert ridge. Except for the initial climb where the foot of the ridge meets the desert floor, it doesn't get very steep before the last two miles or so. The use trail is easy to follow on the gentler slopes, but degrades and disappears during the steeper sections as successive waves of hikers simply scrambled up (or down) the rocks along the best routes they could find. I had printed and distributed maps with a route sort of penciled in based on my earlier reconnoiter, but since all you had to do was continue following the ridgeline the maps were more of a novelty than a useful or necessary guide. We would use them to track our progress by plotting the altitude readings from Steve's GPS against the contour lines on the maps.
Throughout the hike it is difficult to see where you are headed because the ridge is always rearing up before you, obscuring Villager Peak. The ridge runs roughly north-south, with Rattlesnake Canyon down a gentle grade to the east, and a dramatic almost vertical drop down to Clark Valley and Borrego Springs to the west. This western cliff naturally got taller and scarier the higher we went, and at some points the trail skirts alarming precipices of 500 feet or more.
On the other hand, the cars at the trailhead remained in view for almost the entire first three miles or so. Whatever the challenges of a hike like this would be, getting lost was clearly nothing to worry about.
Early on, one of our party began falling back, and after about two miles another fellow started feeling abdominal cramps. He decided to return to the car with his father, so we lost two members of the party. The slower member decided to drop back and see how far he could get on his own, while the rest of us continued up the ridge.
During the last two miles or so below Villager Peak the terrain becomes extremely steep and rocky, and the trail difficult to follow. We constantly lost the trail, but before long I came to understand the merciless logic of its route: if in doubt, go up. No matter how much you wanted to traverse around a rise, you would always find the trail again by scrambling straight up. This took a toll on us, particularly since we all started the hike with two gallons of water each.
As I mentioned, I hadn't been backpacking in a decade, and in any case most of my gear is literally 25 years old. I have always believed that well-made outdoor gear, properly cared for, should last a lifetime (for example, I have already resoled my boots twice). However, after a mini-disaster high up on the ridge, I can report an important field observation concerning old Nalgene bottles (the high-density polyethylene ones, not the deadly polycarbonate versions). At one point I set my pack down on uneven ground, and it fell onto a jumping cholla cactus and bounced off some rocks before stopping. When I picked it up, water was streaming out of the upper compartment. Emptying the pack revealed that one of my older high-density polyethylene Nalgene bottles (one with no markings on it, that's how they were sold in the seventies) had literally shattered from the impact. And here I thought they were indestructible (in fact, I believe the death-dealing polycarbonate bottles really are indestructible, but they will kill you if you drink from them). Clearly, high-density polyethylene bottles grow brittle with age.
The shattered water bottle gave me another chance to prove the superiority of old school frame packs. Earlier in the day, during the lunch break, I had amazed my fellows by producing a bag of stoned wheat thins, with every cracker miraculously intact. Try that with an internal frame! Then when my water bottle exploded, amid universal apprehension that my sleeping bag had gotten wet I was able to report that, thanks to my use of a frame pack, the sleeping bag was lashed in a separate stuff sack to the outside of the pack, and so remained quite dry. The primary casualties of the event were my day pack being soaked, a few articles of clothing getting a bit damp, and of course the death of the historic Nalgene bottle.
Mike was a very rapid and highly experienced hiker, and when the going got tougher he sped off ahead of the rest of us, finally waiting on the sneaky false summit a few hundred feet below Villager. We struggled to the top of Villager, more or less together, by about 4:00. About 4,700 feet of gain in roughly six and a half miles. I confessed it was the toughest climb I had ever attempted (a steep hike, but also all that damned water), and got Mike (who has hiked at 20,000 feet in Bolivia) to admit it was in his top three toughest. Nonetheless, we all experienced the usual exhilaration and good cheer one feels every time a summit is achieved.
The top of Villager Peak is a superb camping spot. It is covered by stunted but inviting pine trees, and the actual campsites are about twenty feet below the western summit, to the lee of the violent winds and weather coming in from the northwest. Amazing views are available in all directions, including of the Salton Sea. We found a party of three already camped at the top, and after our summit photo we began to set up our own camp.
The Night
Mike set up a tent and I strung a tarp using my video monopod, while Bill and Steve laid out bivy sacks, which always give me the creeps when I see people using them. Then we all prepared our respective dinners. As the sun receded behind the western mountains the air grew colder and soon after dark we were all in our sleeping bags. There was no wind and the sky was clear. I lay on my back with my head out from under the tarp, and even without my glasses I could see the Milky Way, a couple of satellites, a shooting star. I didn't bring a book, so all I could do was lay there and watch the stars until I began to get sleepy, when I slithered back under the tarp.
It started raining about 10:00pm, and the wind came up as well, but it never really got very cold at night. While the rain drizzled off and on throughout the night, I could hear the wind raging like a hurricane in the distance, though all we felt in our protected camp were a few strong gusts.
In the morning we could see frightening banks of dark clouds coming straight at us from the northwest, covering Toro and Rabbit Peaks. We decided not only to cancel the Rabbit Peak ascent but to break camp as quickly as possible to race the storm down the mountain. I was acutely concerned that what was already going to be a treacherous downhill hike would be rendered far more dangerous by rain-slicked rocks. We left the summit by about 8:00am.
Descent
After about a mile we found Lee breaking camp, and he continued down the mountain with us. Whether we were quicker than the weather front moving in on us, or (as I suspect) it was actually being effectively blocked by Toro and Rabbit Peaks, we never did have to contend with anything besides high winds and dramatic clouds and fog on the way down. After a couple miles we were back in the sunlight again, and the hike down was quick and uneventful.
Back at the cars, we could see the clouds roiling angrily along the top of the ridge, obscuring Toro, Rabbit and Villager. This was the second time I'd been turned back by weather on this mountain. I will be back again soon.
Goodies
Photos from the hike can be viewed here.
Here is the video.
I am pretty slow (much slower with a 50+ lbs backpack -- I had 2.5 gallons of fluid with me) and I take lots of pictures, and I think the only way for me to enjoy and complete a Villager/Rabbit Peak trip is a 3-day 2-night trip: 7 to 8 hours to get to villager Peak, spend the night, spend the whole 2nd day on hiking up Rabbit Peak and back to Villager Peak, spend the 2nd night on Villager Peak, hike down the 3rd day. Anyone here reading this and interested in a slow-pace (1 mph max) backpacking trip up Villager and Rabbit Peaks, please let me know.