Here is some news you can use concerning the Boden Canyon portion of the Orosco – Boden Loop. It turns out the California Department of Fish an Wildlife (CDFW) owns a couple of parcels of land in the canyon and have it designated as an ecological preserve. The agency’s default policy is that mountain biking is not allowed on ecological reserves. I was made aware of this by CDFW after publishing the route. I made them aware of the lack of signage concerning trail use restrictions. It is my understanding that the signage has probably already been corrected. I have updated my page, map and GPS files to reflect the CDFW parcels. Unfortunately, the CDFW trail use restrictions makes it impossible to legally loop together the Lower Santa Ysabel Truck Trail and Orosco Ridge.
As you can tell from the pictures, the canyon is beautiful and is well worth a hike through. The only other way you can go legally enjoy this canyon is during hunting season. During the upland bird hunting seasons you are more than welcome to trounce around wherever you like in the ecological reserve and blast the heads off those birds with a shotgun. I’m having a tough time trying to make sense of how the CDFW can view killing birds as a more acceptable use for this land than allowing mountain bikers and equestrians to pass through the canyon on the old road. I’m going to leave my commentary at that for now. If I get some reasonable justifications for the policy in the future, I’ll provide an update. Until then beware that you can’t legally do the Orosco-Boden Loop on a mountainbike or horse.
