Monthly Recap – January 2025

Happy New Year and welcome to TFTC! This site was initially envisioned as a place where I could showcase the many photos I take on camping trips and try to create some sort of an enjoyable accompaniment to them. I’ve decided now to also try and document my day-to-day life experiences, on a hopefully manageable monthly basis.

In addition to trail reports and outdoors-related blogs, I’m planning on recapping my monthly happenings here. I don’t have too solid of a plan for how this will all look, so we will see what feels most natural as I get into a groove. Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

I suppose there’s no better time to start monthly recaps than the new year, especially because I had a particularly eventful and exciting Q4 of 2024. As tempted as I am to write about it, I think it’s best to just start fresh with 2025.

For New Years’ Eve my family continued our annual tradition of a large celebration at my parents’ home. Amongst my cousins (or at least for me), this is the biggest, most highly anticipated family get-together of the year. This year was especially exciting and meaningful as we were joined by some newly-added family. In celebration of our recent engagement, Emma’s parents joined us for New Years’ and were hastily introduced to my overwhelming extended family (Big-Fat-Greek-Wedding-style). Jason and Melody brought their significant others as well, and it was a wonderful feeling to see our dinner table grow longer.

We enjoyed our traditional midnight firecrackers (sorry neighbors) and played a good bit of beer pong, at the request of the older generations who wanted to watch and take an occasional celebrity shot. I’m already looking forward to next year!

Hikes

Mt. Laguna

After sleeping off our late night, we joined Christina and her boyfriend Henry for a New Years’ hike on the Sunset Trail in Mount Laguna. The sky was clear and the weather far warmer than to be expected in January, which made for very pleasant walking conditions. Henry’s dog chased flocks of ducks through the many ponds as we went along the path and enjoyed the scenery. We completed a relatively non-strenuous 8 mile loop and enjoyed each other’s company. Hopefully we can do it again soon!

BRC

After months of waiting, we were finally able to schedule an introductory hike with the Borderlands Relief Collective. They are a community organization which supplies water, nonperishable food, and other essentials to remote locations, along paths frequented by migrants to the United States. They operate mainly in the Otay Mountain Wilderness, a steep mountain preserve directly on the border with Mexico. We had the opportunity to complete two hikes with them, supplying water, gatorades, canned food, and medical supplies to outposts they had created along some established migrant routes.

The hikes were tough – steep and unforgiving with little to no trail to follow and surrounded by dense growth which punctured our clothes and tangled in our hair. Our packs were filled to the brim with supplies, enough to leave rations in multiple locations along our route. As we began the descent into the creek bed, I estimate we were carrying over 50 pounds on our backs. After our trek back up to our starting point, despite my near-empty bag, my head was pounding and my clothes were drenched in sweat. Afterwards, we celebrated with tacos and Mexican cokes.

I did not take many photos out of respect for the organization and the humans who are forced to take these routes as a means to (hopefully) better their lives. In hindsight though, I wish I had taken a few more. The Otay Mountains host a beautiful collection of flora that was completely new to me, even as an avid hiker and lifelong San Diegan. There were large strands of the rare and endemic Tecate Cypress tree; tall and with wispy branches dotted in the characteristic seedpods which distinguish them.

Tragically, the area where we had hiked with BRC was recently subject to a massive wildfire, and in many areas practically nothing is left but rocks, soil, and charred remnants of the cypress.

Given the current political situation at the border, this was a particularly bad time for a fire in this vital corridor. Hopefully once things are a bit more stable on the mountain, we will be able to return and assist with delivering supplies for those traveling toward whatever it is they hope to find here.

Anyways…

Desert Exploring

John treated us to a spectacular hike this month in the desert of Eastern San Diego County. He brought us to several places that genuinely few seem to know about based on their state of preservation (and let’s keep it that way). Once again, I’m not including many photos here out of respect as John had explicit permission to bring us through and I do not encourage any unwelcome guests to visit.

It was a short walk to the “trailhead” – the seemingly random point in which we turned off of the paved road and into the desert. We passed into a field of boulders composed of granite, mica, and quartz and circled the base of a hill searching for the easiest ascent. Our destination was near the top, where a friend of John’s family had erected a shrine for a storied resident of their small town. We spent a short time admiring the view of the highway and the rugged mountains that surrounded us.

Due to the lack of rains that help to clear the desert floor of the many spikes and spines that litter the ground here (281 days since the last rain, per John as of the date of our hike), there were plenty of opportunities for John’s two dogs to get poked as they followed us on our hike. We frequently had to stop and remove cholla spines or sometimes entire nodules of cactus from their paws, face, and even under their tongues. Luckily, they are both hardy desert dogs and were not phased by the occasional inconvenience.

The next destination John had for us was the property of the family friend who had created the mountain shrine. She had lived there with her now-deceased husband until their house tragically burnt down last year. John first led us to what he called the “stone house”, an unburned-yet-never-finished structure built of river rocks held together with concrete which was the life’s work of her husband. Unfortunately, he was never able to finish this project and bring the home to a habitable state. It certainly seemed, however, that he came damn close as the home was two-story, with many rooms filled with eccentric decor. On display were hundreds of old bullet-ridden steel Chevron and Marlboro signs, license plates from many years and many states, rusted cars and motorcycles, cattle skulls, and plenty more collected over their lifetimes. Art permeated every surface, even the refrigerator; an old 50s model, it was elaborately decorated in brightly-colored abstract paintings. The home functioned as a quasi-museum showcasing the history of the area as well as the lives of those who lived there. We made our way through the home and discovered half-finished paintings hanging on every wall, old crusty paints and rolls of brushes forgotten in dusty faded aluminum coffee cans. The kitchen was filled with old spice jars from the 1940s and 50s. John opened an old McCormick tin of cinnamon and was surprised to find there was still some orange powdered spice left behind. He opted not to try any.

We then briefly visited the site where her home stood before the fire. There was not much but charred wood pieces and a few scattered former belongings. We tried flipping through a photobook we found on the ground but the plastic sleeves had all fused together from the heat, trapping the photos inside. Tired of intruding in someone’s worst tragedy, we headed back down towards John’s house.

As we neared the road, we made one final detour to a series of Mica mines carved one-above-another in the hillside. These deep horizontal bores seemed sturdy and well-visited, and there were no meaningful bits of Mica to be found.

Guadalupe Canyon Hot Springs

The most notable trip of our month was our stay in the fantastic Guadalupe Canyon. This was a multi-day trip to what has to be one of the best camping destinations in Baja California, where each site features its own private hot-spring-fed tub. This was an incredibly special trip, and I wrote about it in detail on the main blog linked below:

Trip Report – Guadalupe Canyon Hot Springs

Tijuana Xolos Game

We closed out the month with a trip to TJ to watch the Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles lose in extra time to Cruz Azul. Luckily, we don’t care much about soccer and were happy to just watch the game and enjoy some esquites. I’m excited to visit again soon.

More Quality Moments

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