Call This Canyon Beautiful

‘No Name’ Explores Southern Region

• Note: I took this trip in March, 2005. Be sure to check with the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park ranger for current road conditions.

One thing about a year with heavy rains in San Diego... it means the desert to the east comes alive.

With advice from desert expert Diana Lindsay and a Jeep Liberty courtesy of Chrysler, I headed east to explore a small part of the vast Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in late February, just when the flowers and greenery had reached their peak.

On two other drives, I’d explored areas to the north... Fonts Point and Split Mountain, so I asked Lindsay to give me a route within striking distance of Interstate 8, just a bit more than an hour from home in central San Diego.

Her suggestion: Canyon Sin Nombre, a twisting drive through nine million years of evolution and the Elsinore Fault, then back up Vallecito Creek, rejoining county highway S-2 near the settlement of Canebrake. It’s just 12 miles through the wilderness, but driving on sand and stopping to take in the view took me a couple of hours.

The desert is normally pastel colors at its brightest, with light browns and pinks complimenting the gray sand. But with this year’s rains, green grasses, bright reds and violets from flowers have created an entirely different view. Even the normally dry sands are darker, as water was still flowing through much of the canyon during my visit.

It’s not exactly Ireland, but the contrast is striking to even veteran desert rates.

According to Lindsay in her book, Anza-Borrego A to Z, Canyon Sin Nombre was named in the 1950s. At that time, it had no name, so the more-romantic Spanish translation was used and Canyon Sin Nombre was born.

Today, it’s a marked trail from S-2, just north of the Carrizo Badlands overlook area.

I first stopped at the overlook,which on a late February Saturday had nearly a dozen cars parked along its snaking access road. The overlook offers a vista of nine million years of geologic history. Cliffs, uplifted and folded over the eons, exposed by erosion and cracking, show layers of sediment, volcanic deposits and other strata.

“It’s the only place on earth where you can see this,” said Lindsay. The view looks east toward the Carrizo Badlands and Split Mountain, which I drove in 2004.

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