Modjeska Reservoir

Posted on December 5, 2004 in Hiking

Early yesterday morning, I climbed part of the way on the Harding Trail. I’m still not able to race with the triathletes who chug along at three to five miles an hour as the old road coils and uncoils up the steep front, but I am able to walk to Laurel Spring without stopping to catch my breath or clear my head or give my legs a rest. Four and a half miles and twenty two hundred feet. I am doing better than I had hoped a few weeks ago.

Because the Harding challenges me with its very name, I keep returning to it. My eyes are set on a double peak about a mile and another 1000 feet past Laurel Spring. On the maps, it has no name. I call it Mount Phil K. Dick and may write to the people who name things on maps to make this official. He was, after all, one of our most influential cultural figures here in the Orange. One summit is bearded by chaparral. Crags cover the second. People who notice these features may breed symbols out of these.

There’s a second Harding, however, and I went to investigate the fringes of these. North of the ridgeline where Harding Trail ascends, there is a Harding Canyon. Between the two spurs of the principal peaks of the Santa Ana Mountains lies a sycamore choked canyon. About two miles past the place where the Harding Trail leaves the Flores Peak Saddle leaving a second road to dive down towards the Modjeska Reservoir, a waterfall is rumored to pour. I walked down this second road, into the wash and towards the Modjeska Reservoir. Quite suddenly, I came across a small pond and a railing. A few steps more brought me to the brink of a concrete wall: I was standing on the top of the dam.

I looked behind me. The creek rose to the surface as it approached an area filled up with debris and gravel. Some flood had brought the mountains down and left big chunks of it here. Whatever value the lake had had was erased by sand, logs, and large round stones. A waterfall fell maybe eighty feet to the stream bottom. Modjeska Reservoir had arrived at the future of Lake Powell.

The natural waterfall awaits my visit. I plan to go there when I find a friend to accompany me. In the meantime, I plan to temper my obsession with the Harding Trail by hiking out to Vulture Crags and up Silverado Canyon. I shall seek out other places where the sycamores have exploded among the shattered debris of the mountains. And I shall go back to Modjeska Reservoir Dam with a camera. I’ve shut my eyes to pictures on this blog for too long.