Night Shift

I can't help but think of ghosts, as I make more of the steps that make up the long stretch between rest stops on the very dark climbers trail up to El Cajon Mountain.

More than a few people have died on this rocky hill. Most were hikers. One rock climber on the face we are hiking to decided to climb without a rope. He fell and nearly took out roped climbers, perhaps turning them also into ghosts as he bounced foolishly into the shrubs at the base of the five-hundred-foot cliff. Most San Diegans don't know about the cliffs of El Cajon Mountain, but they do refer erroneously to the mountain as El Capitan

 I think about that ropeless climber as we hike.

 The summer air is still and hot at night. The full moon is not yet out, but the bugs are. Dogs on sentry duty at some of the houses far below know we are up here and yell at us: " Yark! Yark! " I don't mind that so much. Getting shot at is not so fun, and it happens. Near the bottom of the mountain is an old rock quarry that sits above the dam and reservoir. Climbers use the crumbling, overhanging rock face to practice the skills needed to sleep on the giant walls in Yosemite. It may or may not be the homeowners below the quarry that shots. Still, I personally have been sleeping on that wall, and bullets have impacted it not far from my hanging tent. Some locals don't like the rock climbers. Listening to the persistent alerting dog, I feel sympathy. El Cajon Mountain has a long history in San Diego of epics and tragedies. It features its most strenuous hike and spectacular modern rock climbing. It's highly crowded during the cool season, even on many weekdays, so we climb at night.

It is possible to climb the El Cajon Mountains infamous rock face during the summer months in daylight hours, but you must do so at the crack of dawn, as by afternoon, the rock will be hot to the touch and impossible to climb. During the day, the 2-hour hike up to the rock face is deserted during the summer months; the trail is steep, the rattlesnakes are plenty, and heat exhaustion has taken out more than a few experienced hikers. At night, the rock is still warm, but the temperatures are pleasant, and there are no other foolhardy people up there to share the popular routes that would otherwise see a line queued up waiting for their turn to climb. My friend is stopped on the trail ahead, so I turn off my headlight. In the bushes with no moon, it is pitch black. I am fairly sure I hear footsteps off the trail. I know the mountain lions are here. I turn on my flashlight and am relieved to see no glowing eyes as I shine it around me in a circle. I turn the light back off, wondering if the footsteps are in my imagination. I hear my friend Mike smoking in the dark as he waits for me. I think of ghosts again. There is a different way to get up to the rock face over by the park. If you go that way, you walk by the ruins of an old miners' Homestead, where some remains of the belongings of the person who lived there still lay, including an old rusted typewriter and a decrepit motorcycle that will never run again. Who were they? Could it be their ghost I hear walking on the trail behind me? I start walking along the path again. Mike is waiting for me. He has to do that more these days, as I have fourteen years of living ahead of him. I think about being a ghost someday. I'm in no hurry for that, even though rock climbing is a sport with a memorial section in the magazines honoring my peers who fall. I call the hike up to the rock face " The Golden Staircase " because the second half of the trail is as steep as a set of stairs, and the boulders along the trail are gold and brown in color. If you are trying to make good time, it's a 1.5-hour hike in daylight. At night, it's closer to three hours before we get to the start of the route named Meteor. The moon begins to rise as we rack the climbing gear and start climbing up. We think the Meteor gets its name because it is very steep and you climb straight up. One morning, I was driving along the 8 freeway heading east. I glanced over to the left where El Cajon mountain rises, and I saw that when the sun first rises, the stunning outside corner of the upper part of the climb catches the first morning light, and it lights up like the streak of a meteor in the sky. We see no meteors or shooting stars in the sky tonight as the moon rises, casting our shadows on the granite face. I am climbing up first, clipping the bolts and setting the rope through the anchors.

My right hand grips a thin edge the width of a pencil, and my left hand is feeling around above me, looking for the next move. I am reading g the rock with my fingers like a blind man reading  braille. I don't look up much, just enough to see my headlamp shine on the next safety bolt. I keep my attention on my feet, feeling gravity edge them off my stance one millimeter at a time. Each move higher as difficult as the last, some of the holds feel like I turn over a miniature hour glass, the tick-tocking of a timer clock, because I must move fast or tire and slip.

I know Mike can only see a bobbing headlight above him, nothing of my confidence or fear. Climbers talk to each other: " You got me Mike? " I ask, my voice echoes off the walls of the canyon. " I got you, " he says in the darkness one hundred feet below me now.

I pause at the shelf halfway up the first pitch and take pictures of the city lights below. I hum the Cat Stevens song " Moonshadow " as I finish the first pitch. Mike quickly follows up on the long first section, his headlight throwing conflicting shadows on the wall. We pause at the ledge before the upper corner and share a smoke break and the view. Far below now, the dogs are still barking. Mike starts up his section, and the moon is now so bright that we can almost turn off our headlamps, but we don't. Things feel more serious when we rock climb at night, and perhaps it is. We talk to each other more, both words of encouragement and caution. When he tops out on the false summit of Meteor, he pulls the rope up, and I follow as quickly as I can. Near the top of the face, there is a breeze. The air is no longer stale and now has the fresh feel of the coast. At the top of the climb is a perfectly flat shelf, just big enough for two or three people to sit on. We feel lucky to be here. The 125 freeway is far below and to the south, curving through the lights on its way to the hills that border Mexico. From up here, we can see it all and the darker space of the ocean beyond. To get off, we have to slide down our ropes past an overhang that has you hanging in space twenty feet from the wall and a hundred and fifty feet above the base. This part of climbing is the most dangerous, aside from the drive to get to the cliffs. One mistake would lead to a fast plunge into the darkness. I think again of the ghosts as I start down the trail. It's now 4 a.m., and only we and the dogs are awake. We are treated to the sight of Starlink as we near the car, like an interstellar freight train.

Strip Mining for Gravel

The Vulcan Corporation is a giant company that operates many types of businesses that produce goods extracted from the Earth. It's a long established good old boys club that lists its products and its green policies proudly on their websites. Like a giant octopus, the camoflage it uses is well developed. There is an inky screen it uses to escape most attention and danger. It has many tentacles and is ruthless in pursuit of its prey.

California is well known as a state that is hard to do business in. It is common to hear companies complain of the difficulties of regulations and permits required to operate businesses. Especially ones that product dust and leave pollution in the ground water. Mining is expensive in terms of permits and insurance. 

It's been said that there is no such thing as an honest business man: they will reluctantly be honest about the profits and methods they use, as the risk of both the competetion and the tax collector are ever present.  Its good business to minimize taxation and permit costs.

In a state that is allegedly overly active about regulations, the truth is that there are key things in the supply chain that are not regulated at all. Homeowners sometimes find out after they buy a house with a clean inspection report that the roof leaks. They investigate and quickly find out that there are no standards or licensing requirements for home inspections in California. This allows real estate agents to conduct their business with reports from " inspections " that serve nothing more than to facilitate the transaction. The transaction is always the imperitive for both businessmen and tax collectors.

Companies like The Vulcan Corporation have their similar exploitation. They do not pay their far share of taxes nor pull permits for what is likely their most profitable byproduct because it is completely unregulated.

The lack of regulation and proper oversight is circumstantial evidence that somewhere along the lines the wheels are being greased.

Gold and other metals are sluiced out of these gravel beds: in every single known location where historic gold mining happened the Vulcan Corporation has set up massive " aggregate  plants " that process millions of tons of gravel that is sold at a profit.

Completely undeclared and undocumented is the products these operations yield as a byproduct. 

Truckloads of gold, literally, taken illegally out of them thar hills. There is more gold in the ground that was left behind then was ever pulled out by the old time prospectors, and there is no way this Corporation would get permits to operate a strip mine at the mouth of the Azusa Canyon that produced gold.

But innocent gravel used for building and road purposes? that's easily permitable.

They are able to get started in areas favorable to the underlying goal, which is the unregulated and unregistered processing of byproduct.

" I knew of a man in the San Joaquin Valley of California (near Fresno) who set up equipment in several gravel pits up and down the valley from Sacramento southward. He would place large washer boxes in the existing gravel classifying equipment and catch the fine gold as the river rocks and gravel moved through the system. I understand he would find 20 to 50 ounces a month depending on the location and output of the gravel pit. I know from first hand experience that most of the sand and gravel pits in this area of California do their own recovery of fine gold, and many make as much on the gold as they do on the sand and gravel. "

Many of the locations in San Diego and elsewhere they operate are not involved in any obvious way with this massive scheme. They are callous in the apparent disregard for complaints from townspeople nearby about dust and noise, but otherwise operate large settling ponds and processing pits in unsuspecting areas like Black Mountain in San Diego, near the 15 and 56 without much notice.

Other areas, the plunder is much more brazen. Like the area around Fish Canyon at the mouth of Azuza canyon where they are grotesqely strip mining the hillside and using these ill gotten gains to, one can speculate, bribe the right hands at the right intervales to keep this organized scheme off the radar of most of the residents.

One can find many links to now deleted web pages about court battles and town meetings regarding this area. The company does all this, claiming to be producing building materials, but the real cash cow is the byproduct of the areas they work in. The residents complaining about dust, noise from blasting and loss of access to hiking trails

 

Information about the tin and copper deposits around Vulcan Corps Corona California " aggregate " plant.

https://thediggings.com/mines/18678

San Diego lawsuits:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/106/1010/2510758/

Gravel prospecting: https://www.treasurenet.com/threads/prospecting-in-gravel-pits.33577/

The Big Wet One

 "The Big Wet One "

Many San Diego homeowners and property owners are battling with storms and flood water and the associated moisture and mold issues that come with them. This fight is not just contained to the recent storms that brought national attention to our city; it is a war of attrition. Like a Trojan Horse, the rain was welcomed. But now the infiltration is near complete, and people realize there is "water, water everywhere. "

The real troubles may lie directly ahead. 

https://www.aonedge.com/Resource-Center/Blog/California-Great-Flood-of-1862

In this age of social pitfalls, where stating the wrong opinion about viral ideas and "settled science "can have one blacklisted, stalked, harassed, and generally regretful about ever bringing up the notion that there might be bigger wheels turning, the casual heresy of talking about weather calamities as being natural and cyclical is rife with concern. So, for argument, let's suspend disbelief and accept this presentation as an allegation of real people and events. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. There is no need for torches and canceling; we can all agree that people have a direct cause and effect on our climate and that pollution is terrible.

Recent storms in San Diego flooded homes and businesses. That is news. 

Why this is happening is not news because it's not easily understood.

San Diego has experienced several years of above-average rain. Before the hurricane last year, the previous rainfall of 2022-2023 shattered records and seemed relentless. My rain gauge outside my East County home measured over forty inches of rain, far exceeding what was reported. Some may recall that on Friday in 2019, over four inches of rain fell in San Diego, beyond the January storm that made news as the largest on record in 100 years. 

What is this? Fake news? Lazy reporting? A scramble to be first to print?

Loudly absent in the cacophony of news anchor voices shouting about "atmospheric rivers "and "accelerating man-made climate change "is any sensible reference to history. 

Looking at history, using various sources and historical data, the reality is that current weather patterns over the last several years mirror the weather patterns of 1862, which destroyed 25% of the inhabited real estate in California, forced our state capital to be moved fifty miles away to higher ground and killed thousands of people.

If the pattern repeats its complete previous cycle, it will be the greatest natural disaster in our nation's history. Imagine the 8 freeway in Mission Valley under ten feet of water.

"Water is coming out of our floors. "

San Diego is at an intersectionality proving painful and costly to many homeowners. Imagine your roof is not leaking, but the carpets and baseboards around the living room are wet. Your home is on a slab.

The process is common for homeowners. They call a fire and flood company, who comes in and usually removes the floor and bottom two feet of drywall, stripping the home down to its bones in the area affected. These companies set up fans and dehumidifiers, and the homeowners are told to seek a remedy through a plumber or drainage specialist. 

All of this happens with the real suggestion that lack of action can cause mold to set in. Still, it's a whirlwind, and the terrified homeowner is now locked into costly rentals and reconstruction. The hapless homeowner pays a leak detection company to find that there is no leak. They then turn to the internet, looking for a drain company. Plumbers and gardeners are usually whom the oracles at Google send the homeowners to, and some of these companies, or people, may see an opportunity to take money from the victim's hands, turn it into food, and put it in their mouths, so they give a price to fix the problem, often times having no previous experience whatsoever.

The homeowner may spend thousands on said work. Then it rains, and they sometimes find their situation worse because gardening and plumbing aren't drainages. Drainage done incorrectly can redirect and concentrate the water, worsening the problem.

The money pits and traps for the homeowners are more intense for San Diego homes with a crawlspace. People don't associate basements in homes in San Diego. Still, there are literally hundreds of basements in cities like La Mesa, Vista and La Jolla, in areas built into hillsides that are currently seeping water into the living spaces.

The confluence of aging homes, poorly designed or non-existent city planning, and lack of experience with waterproofing homes by local contractors is now a multi-billion dollar problem for San Diego property owners. Some cities like La Mesa and Encinitas have zero civil engineering, i.e., plans for drainage and parking, because the houses are built on what was once farms, and the city incorporations came later. It is not uncommon for homeowners in these areas to find out that they are in a flood zone or that large storm drains on their properties are older than the city they live in. When they fail, the homeowners may be able to file a claim with their insurance company but are otherwise on their own.

They then have to go through a process of trial and error with contractors to find a fix.

The multi-billion dollar flood and reconstruction problem is a gasping canary in the coal mine, warning of lousy air ahead. 

This recent storm brought much more severe localized flooding than the storms of the last few years, which added up to more rain. It wasn't just a  single record rain day that caused these floods, because we have had those and have not flooded to the same extent. Why the storm was measurably worse in property destruction because all the soil was already saturated from the previous year's rains, and not only could the soil not absorb any more rain, but the hydrostatic pressure from the water table was pushing the groundwater up so that some areas and neighborhoods in Clairmont made news last spring because they were literally flooding with groundwater.

Areas without the obvious crisis-level flows requiring cities to set up pump stations are experiencing this same hydrostatic pressure. Rainwater aggressively pushes its way out of the soil, into the footings and crawlspaces, up through the concrete slabs, and into the walls. This can cause anything from wet carpets to rendering the homes literally uninhabitable because of mold. 

Why does one San Diego home get mold, and the next just gets a wet patio after the rain?

It seems to be luck. Homes that have more rocky soil tend to have fewer issues. Areas of high clay ( see 90% of San Diego ) have more costly problems.

The recent storms brought localized calamities that were entirely preventable. From clogged rain gutters pulling them off the homes and clogged landscape drains to blown-out sump pumps never maintained since installation, the worst case I heard of was an Encinitas homeowner who had the intersectionality of trash cans in the curb pushing a deluge out of the gutter, a clogged street storm drain, and her garage set below street level. She watched haplessly as the water roared through her home with enough force to rearrange the furniture. 

Historical Patterns & The Looming Disaster.

Now, our soils are at peak saturation, and another "atmospheric river "is said to be coming. 

It's easy enough to research and pick from various sources. I like dry facts and plain numbers without the faintest trace of politics. I understand that politics is like art in that some people see it as offensive, whereas others might find bias or spin beautiful.

A crusty old professor on YouTube named Leon Hunsaker has a video called "The Legendary Floods of 1861 & 1962 "that presents the measurable records and describes what will happen, to some extent, to a modern California should the pattern repeat.

Imagine every dam in the state overflowing and the rivers flowing at four times flood level. Imagine around one million submerged homes around the states and map-changing mudslides.

The Great Flood of California occurred after several years of above-average rain, similar to what we are experiencing now. In 1862, with the ground wholly saturated from previous rains, a subsequent and more enormous storm dumped over ten feet of rain. 

This storm was so massive that Big Bear mining communities were under thirty feet of snow, and some people were trapped for six months. Then, spring came. The enormous snowpack met with a heat wave, and the floods raged for weeks when they melted rapidly.

People lost their lives by the thousands, and entire communities were washed away. 

This was before the vast floodplain of the Central Valley was populated, before Mission Valley was built, and its floodwaters were long forgotten.

If this same combination of events happens, and we get the now overdue arc storm in the next year or two ( it could actually still happen this year ), the headlines will be screaming about man-made climate disaster, but the real story is lack of civil planning and engineering and a state that was parceled out by land speculators who ruthlessly marketed some small towns like Joshua Tree as a tropical paradise. Literally, charlatans would stick oranges to the spines of a Joshua Tree, take a photo, and market it to speculators back east as land with fruit orchards.

The book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner describes these wild marketing gimmicks and how Los Angeles was sold and built before any water plan was made, creating aging curiosities like the California aqueduct ( where thousands of miles of open canals allow millions of gallons of water to evaporate from The Colorado River ) and The Owens River project, which supplied water and power to Los Angeles.

In recent years, municipal water departments have lamented leaky irrigation. Our culture was sold on green grass and tropical plants, and many are just stuck there, even though they are wrong for our environment ( related to the general lack of civic planning and engineering ). 

It's related because right now, all over San Diego, people are running their irrigation and over-watering saturated soil that can barely breathe ` because it is wet clay.

The intersectionality of cleptomatic state politicians, historical shysterism of land speculators, aging homes, bad construction standards and practices, and current weather events are a significant headache for many San Diegans. 

Headaches and nuisances are far different from tragedies. A flooded home is a nuisance, but large-scale loss of life and property is a tragedy.

That people in positions of power will exploit and benefit from the tragedy is a guarantee almost as certain as the looming disaster our state faces. They don't want any of us to type "The Great Flood Of California "into a search engine because it would make us wonder why they haven't done anything to prepare for the obvious, and it would knock the wind out of their gasbags when they try to assign blame to man-made climate change, which is natural of course, settled science and all but verboten to talk about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert