Boots Across the Baja

5. Cañon del Diablo

This is the fifth of a seven-part series about a December 1982 trek across the Baja—enjoy! Will post Part 6 shortly. Part 1 is here. —Ken

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The Baja’s Sonoran Desert is a large place. Our little piece of it included minor rolls, bumps and dips between the flatter planes, and many shapes and colors to catch the eye, but nothing so striking as the desert as a whole. I felt completely unleashed from Western Civilization, for a while at least.

We crossed rutted wheel tracks several times, wondering if these might be evidence of the infamous Baja 1000, the mega-race among hundreds of contestants bounding across the desert like migrating arthropods. Beyond the car tracks, the landscape became nearly pristine again.

The hike droned on as the coolness of the morning surrendered to the warmth of spreading sunlight. My ankle was doing well, I thought. Maybe we should have started at the beach after all, sea to shining. The mountains moved closer and grew larger and more formidable with every hour. We could see canyons, but they blended into the escarpment, making them difficult to fully identify. Cañon del Diablo could be especially challenging to distinguish from a distance.

Most canyons, according to the topographical maps I carried, poured off to the east, as any good canyon should in a north-south trending mountain range. The Canyon of the Devil had ulterior motives, flowing south to north, parallel to the escarpment, which also left it largely hidden from view. Descending fifteen miles from the high col between Picacho del Diablo and Botella Azul, Cañon del Diablo necessarily cut a deep trough between dramatic granite walls.