Santiago Scar and Wart

Hiked: 4/29/2018
Distance: 2.8 miles round trip on dirt road and cross country
Summit Elevation: 4446' (Wart)
Elevation Gain: 1388'
Elevation Gain (in Empire State Buildings): 1.11
Round trip time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Recommended water: 40 oz.
Parking/Fees: Free on North Main Divide Road
Difficulty: Moderate

The Santa Ana Mountains are the not the prettiest mountains. The range is covered in thick chaparral, the canyons dense with poison oak, and a dirt road bisects most of it. Willie and I embraced the ugly and set off to explore the "Scar", a massive drainage that disfigures the south face of Santiago Peak, and the "Wart", a rough, rocky outcrop half way down the Scar. These are names I fabricated for the geological features, but they seem to fit. The Scar is visible 20 miles away if you know to look for it.

Let me show you a new place
If you follow directions
You'll be wearing a new face
Add it to your collection
-- Paul Revere and the Raiders, Mr. Sun Mr. Moon
There's no easy way to reach the bottom of the Scar, so we planned to descend from Main Divide Road just below the Santiago summit. From the Telephone Ridge hike, I knew the upper slopes of Santiago were clogged with buckthorn. I mapped a direct descent to the top of the Scar and an alternate route down scree. We parked at the saddle between Santiago and Modjeska allowing room for other vehicles to pass. It was a short hike to the drop in point. The Wart was visible from the road. The Scar wasn't. We started on a direct angle toward the top of the Scar. Progress ended quickly in a solid wall of buckthorn. It would have taken hours to chop our way through, so we backtracked and headed down the scree. That was much more manageable. Light bushwhacking, talus, and yucca, got us half way to the Wart. Past more brush was an open field where we got our first close look into the Scar. It was about 20-30' across and about 15' deep. The sides were crumbly dirt and there were a surprising number of large rocks and boulders in the channel. There was no safe way in, so we continued toward the Wart. A final, short section of heavy bushwhacking was required to reach the Wart. Somewhere in that section, I lost my sunglasses and didn't find them. [$100 reward for return of the sunglasses lost in the brush above the Wart] Once we got out of the brush, access to the Wart was easy, and provided outstanding views up and down the Scar. The top of the Wart stood at 4446', 880' and 0.4 miles below the road. We felt it was worthy of a register so we placed one.

Santiago Scar and Wart from Rancho Santa Margarita

Willie ready to go

Crawling obstacle

First look into the Scar

Nasty section just above the Wart

Willie on the Wart

Looking down to the lower Scar

Placed the register

Next, we descended into the Scar and continued lower. We stopped at a 15' fall. There was a good scramble route down, but we didn't trust the flaky dirt to hold the boulders in place. We could have gone down the Wart to reach the lower Scar, but instead we decided to climb. It might be worth a second trip to explore the lower Scar. Going up was mostly class 2 on unstable ground. We climbed about 350' up the Scar before looking for an exit. We didn't want to go all the way to the top and be trapped in buckthorn prison, so we bailed out and made an arc around the brush to the scree slope. It was far less fun going up the scree than sliding down. And a lot slower. We stayed on track and made it back to the road for the easy march down to the truck. I removed a couple of buckthorn splinters on the way back. The one in my finger came out cleanly, the one in my butt broke off and was too deep to extract. I am hoping it works itself out in the next week or so. It was pure fun exploring Santiago's blemishes.

Into the Scar

Ascending the Scar

Looking back at the Wart

Exit

Clouds rolled in as we finished

Willie made this kick ass video