It’s Like Old Times : In the Rugged San Pedro Martir National Park of Baja California, a Traveler Can Be ‘in the Middle of Nowhere and Then Farther Into It’

The traveler now finds himself in a new world, totally unlike the balance of Baja California, a world where he may wander at will; for condors and eagles, wild ducks, mountain quail, deer, wild cats, lions, coyotes, half-wild horses and cattle--descendants of the herds of the Frailes--alone dwell on the crest.

--Arthur Walbridge North

Laila Keller, 9, stood atop the world North described in the early 1900s and launched a small wooden airplane.

It floated out over the desert floor, 9,000 feet below, caught an updraft and circled high overhead before crash-landing back into the hands of its launcher.

Keller smiled and sent the plane on another flight, and again was able to recover her toy. It never occurred to the Ojai youngster, here for an overnight stay with her family, that the world North described had hardly changed at all.

The large gray wolves that roamed the San Pedro Martir range are gone, the last one reportedly killed in 1903. Gone, too, is the fierce grizzly bear that in the 1880s terrorized local inhabitants to the point they were sure it was sent by the Devil.

But from a perch atop a mountain, where sits Mexico’s esteemed national observatory, it is easy to see that you can still wander at will for weeks without encountering anything but forests of pine and the wildlife they support.

To the East, you can gaze out over the vast and relentless San Felipe desert and follow it to the lime-green waters of the Sea of Cortez, and even beyond to the Sonora countryside. To the West, you can retrace your 50-mile route to the coast until it drops off into the cool-blue Pacific.

Beneath and about you are forests of spruce, cypress, tamarack, fir, cedar and fern. Some of the pines reach 100 feet or more. Across the way to the South, Picacho del Diablo, or Devil’s Peak, looms a defying 10,000-plus feet.

Inside the park are 50 square miles of forest, untouched by timber interests since the late 1800s. There are grassy plains and wooded swales, ridges and jagged peaks. Hot and cold springs gurgle into large pools. Icy streams flow swiftly through the San Pedro Martir range, some harboring a strain of rainbow trout similar to that found in California’s Sierra Nevada.

Granite boulders tower and sparkle with quartz, feldspar and mica. Purple sage sets the hills ablaze after spring rains and drenching summer thundershowers. Winter snows reach depths of 10 feet.

“It’s a very, very rugged area,” said Tim Hughes, 28, of Redlands, who has spent weeks at a time in this region of Baja. “The landscape all looks the same. First of all, you’re in the middle of nowhere, and then you’re going farther into the middle of nowhere.”

You can spend a week in the deep regions of the park--it is suggested that you go with a guide, usually obtainable through the Meling guest ranch in the foothills of this range or through Baja travel specialists--and not come across another human being. If you do, more than likely it will be the local cowboys, or vaqueros , tending to cattle in any of several long grassy meadows.

Missionaries once traveled this range to avoid the hot, dry desert floor. Francisco Junipero Serra traveled around southern and western spurs of the range on his historic journey north to San Diego. The nearby mission, San Pedro Martir, was founded in 1794.

Serra, Crespi and Portola “suffered cruelly from exhausting grades and rocks,” according to early accounts. The exact location of their trail north from San Fernando in 1769 is still unknown.

The English adventurer, William Ryan, wrote of his experience after leaving the range--probably on the San Felipe Desert side--in 1847: “Emerging from these labyrinths, we find ourselves upon a long and narrow valley, frowned upon from both sides by gloomy rocks, which seemed to reach the sky. Traveling . . . under an insufferably hot sun, and over such roads, is the very climax of misery.”

Today’s adventurer finds in the Sierra San Pedro Martir a unique forest, managed by nature and nature alone. Fallen trees, victims of age and lightning, lie in the meadows, scurried upon by squirrels and other small animals. Broken branches litter the forest, providing the camper with an endless supply of firewood. Pine needles blanket the forest floor.

“When you have a 9,000-foot plateau, surrounded by so much distance that it evolves into its own unique kind of forest, there’s really nothing like it,” said Marty Hiester, 35, a Lake Tahoe resident who compiles travel guides for Mexico. “It’s great for family camping. People can drive off on one of the several dirt roads and find their own little corner of a meadow and just set up and be free.”

These dirt roads splinter at various points off the main one that leads from Highway 1, about 75 miles south of Ensenada, to the observatory at 9,200 feet, where several telescopes, housed in blue-and-white domes, are nestled among the pines, offering an unsurpassed view of the heavens.

Some call this the clearest spot on earth, and certainly it would be hard to disagree while gazing east or west during the day, or straight up toward a dazzling night sky uninterrupted by any artificial light.

The observatory is the reason for the generally fair condition of the road and, therefore, the relatively easy access to the national forest reserve and its 155,670 acres, set aside by the Mexican government in 1951.

One can find solitude and even legend in the more remote areas of the range. Cowboys stilltalk of the dwindes, similar to leprechauns, who they say live in a deep cave near a rocky outcropping in La Grulla Meadow.

“Legend has it, the leprechauns appear from time to time near the cattle camp, a few hundred yards from the cave,” said Hughes, who while employed at Meling Ranch has traveled with the vaqueros on several occasions. “They’ve been in camp and they’ve seen these little men and they even say they dress in green, which is really strange. They don’t even like to joke about it. They really believe in it.”

Less legendary, but mysterious nonetheless, is the presence of rainbow trout that swim the local streams. How they got here is unclear, but they have survived unmanaged since their discovery in 1905, and still provide the fisherman who can find them a challenge unavailable elsewhere in Baja.

However, the ultimate challenge is presented in the form of towering granite peaks called Picacho del Diablo, actually two peaks of nearly equal height--only two feet separate them--which are Baja’s highest at 10,154 feet.

Mt. Everest it is not. But Picacho del Diablo is no walk in the park, and is definitely not for the novice climber. Some have conquered its summit, others have not. Still others have died trying, and there are those who barely made it home alive.

Claremont College students Ogden E. Kellogg Jr. and Eleanor Dart were lost for two weeks on the mountain’s slopes in the late 1960s before being brought out starving and exhausted, after an extensive and well-publicized search.

The pair started their ascent in the wrong canyon, with enough food for 10 days, “but it took us three times that long to reach the top,” Dart said after the ordeal. She survived on algae and water from melting snow for most of the 18 days she was alone while Kellogg was off looking for help.

“I’ve seen guys who said they’ve climbed every major mountain in North America,” Hughes said. “I’ll go, ‘Great.’ These guys look like they’re in great shape and I’ll tellthem ‘You’re going to have a difficult time finding how to get down to Campo Noche (the base camp) and climbing the mountain.

“One group, they’ve tried four times now and they still haven’t been able to go up and back.”

Just to get to the base camp requires a daylong descent and climb over rugged terrain consisting largely of granite boulders.

“The hardest part of the whole climb is getting to the base,” Hughes said. “It’s steep going down. You’re sliding on your butt and you kind of hope you’re going to land on this rock. If not, you’re going to fall down 30 more feet into these manzanita bushes that are bigger than you are.”

From Campo Noche, the actual climb is relatively easy, assuming that you take the proper route--and the weather cooperates.

Hiester attempted the climb twice and failed both times because of thunderstorms that swept through the area. “I’ve done everything except get to the summit of Picacho,” he said.

Undaunted, he said he will probably be back for a third try.