A little while ago my wife any myself felt the need to get out of town one morning and as a last second decision we headed to Carrizo Gorge. This is a quite unknown, very desolate, quite illegal, and very spectacular place. This ride was along the “Impossible Railroad” east of San Diego in the Anzo Borrego desert. It starts in Jacumba up on the mountain and goes to Ocotillo Wells at the desert floor with a very mellow and consistent gradient the whole way. It’s about 8 miles long. This stretch of railroad is famous for having the most wooden trestles, the most tunnels, and the largest curved wood trestle.


Here’s one of the 17 tunnels along the 8 mile stretch of railway. Some of these tunnels are very long and all of them are dark and spooky. There’s a lot of great old Hobo monikers in them too.



Here’s some photos of a restored sight seeing train left right in the middle of the canyon. As far as I can tell there’s nobody doing train tours though. It’s so far out in the middle of nowhere that it just sits out there looking lonely.




Here’s one of the really long tunnels. I rode a Santa Cruz Blur that day which really helped when I had to ride on the tracks. Next time I will bring my Niterider as that hiking head lamp was grossly insufficient.



This is the famous Goat Trestle. It’s curved and made completely of wood. It’s really an amazing thing to see. When you ride over it you are on steel grate so you can see the canyon floor over 150 feet below.