The Main Divide Road

Posted on June 21, 2004 in The Orange Travels - So Cal

Behind our house exists a mountain so large and with slopes so steep that the sprawl slops up the sides only a little ways before reaching its high tide mark and leaving only a thin film of developments and the occasional droplet of a lone house on a hilltop. Much of this is rightly called wilderness because it is impenetrable even to those who wish to scramble across its faces even on foot. Chamise, mazanita, toyon, and scrub oaks stop the flow of human invasion much as water disappears into a sponge. Those few of us who enter it by the trails and dirt truck tracks become lost in its wirey curls.

We went for a hike near Ortega Highway. I got too enthusiastic and decided to avoid the long drive over paved roads and take a short cut by way of Silverado Canyon. The road to the skyline was a little hard going after Maple Springs, but other than having to negotiate past a caravan of four balloon-wheeled SUVs, each carrying only a single hairy-eyeballed driver, we made it to the top. We turned right on the Main Divide Road and began our transit of the Saddleback along a road which delivered a rambling soliloquy without getting to the point.

One could imagine a voice troubled by hacks, sneezes, rasps, and, in some places, violent coughs as the Main Divide Road told us its woes. One spot, cut through the landslide across the face of Mount Modjeska, particularly terrified me. Long pointing stones, crumbled and dropped from an ancient meta-sedimentary bed, filled the roadbed loosely. The truck trail looked like very ancient, brown swiss cheese afflicted with a severe case of eczema. In several places, potholes screamed for our gasoline and hydraulic fluid. The worst place featured moon-sized craters passable only by a pair of narrow ridges up a 8% slope. I didn’t dare close my eyes or the mind’s inner ear as I gave the truck a little gas and, miraculously, found the eight-inch wide tracks and surmounted the obstacle in the first attempt.

A mile up the road and about fifteen minutes later, the way was part blocked by a truck whose owner had evidentally attempted to improvise his own faster version of the crude highway’s song*. Only a few feet from a rim over which recovery would have been problematic, he’d leaped over a bump and landed so hard that his right front wheel detached from the axle. It slumped outwardly while the victim called for help on his cell phone, his ordeal shared by two old timers who knew that this score should be chanted slowly.

They guided me by and we continued over the crescendo of Mount Santiago. The road became no better. It was unevenly punctuated by rocks too small to blast, too large for the engineers of this grade to dig out. Here and there, large boulders had rolled off the road cuts. We dreaded each slope, each bend in the road lest it conceal an impassable period on our adventure. We dreaded going back over the terrain we knew and we dreaded what was coming.

At one place, a white SUV stopped in front of us and the driver got out to catch a gopher snake. This was for both of us a welcome chance to get out of the truck, talk to him, hold the snake, and, best of all, relieve our lower lumbars from the road’s bouncing and jiggling. He released the snake and then continued, turning left at the next fork which would take him to Corona.

We went straight, following the ridgeline along the heads of Holy Jim and Trabuco Canyons. During our downhill roll from Mount Santiago, I had shifted all the way up into third gear. I forgot to change it when we began to climb up a craggy section and the truck failed to make it. It rolled backwards. I turned the wheel hard to the left so that it would roll into the roadcut, put on the brake, and tried again. We didn’t move. I had Lynn get out, check the wheel and remove a stone which seemed to be holding us back, then tried again. Are the wheels spinning? I called. She couldn’t tell, so I had her get in the driver’s seat and gun the engine. The back wheels remained motionless. I yelled in short sentences whose spelling was mangled by sputters, clicks, and spitting. I had Lynn get out of the truck. “I need you to watch the tires and let me know if they are moving,” I cried, more at the problem but also at her because it seemed to me that she wasn’t doing her job right. I revved the engine again and despite the mighty roar of exertion, the wheels did not spin. What had happened? Had our drive train suddenly given out? Had all the potholes undone the integrity of our truck? Then I saw the red letters: BRAKE. I pulled the release, gave it gas, and drove to a flat spread about 50 yards up the hill, honked my horn, and sheepishly waited for Lynn.

We arrived at our destination forty five minutes later, about three and a half hours after we set out from our home. The hike to the top of Los Pinos Peak took us less than an hour. We were back well before sunset. Forty five minutes after we left the dirt parking area and made our way off the other end of the dirt highway, we pulled into our usual space at the condominiums and ended the story.

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*This was the second such personal disaster we witnessed in as many days. Enroute to our hike in Trabuco Canyon, we passed a black truck whose driver had taken a jump over a high bump and come crashing down so far that his front suspension totally disconnected. He waved to us sadly as he passed, throwing stones into the wash while he waited for a tow truck driver to haul him back to the main-travelled roads.