Smuggler's Gulch

Nate and I have both worked on a project this year called "Smuggler's Gulch." It is a project to construct a portion of the US (California) /Mexico border fence and patrol road. Its a pretty interesting project. I went on a field visit last week. Here's a few pictures...

This first picture is a shot of the existing fence. Its a steel plate type wall about 15'-20' in height. In the Smuggler's Gulch project area, north of this wall (US side) is wilderness and south of this wall (Mexico side) is the city of Tijuana.

This second picture is from the top of Spooner's Mesa looking east over Smuggler's Gulch. Smuggler's Gulch is a canyon/stream that flows from south to north from Tijuana into the US. This stream functions as an outflow for the city of Tijuana's sanitary sewage. As the stream/sewage enters the US, it is diverted into a wastewater treatment plant. After seeing it and smelling it for myself, how neighborly...

Anyway, what you are looking at is a hill about 350' tall. You can see the fence as the black line in the middle of the picture. On the right of the black line is Mexico, on the left, the US. If you look closely, you can see a missing portion of the fence where there was a slope failure.

This third picure was taken from the floor of the gulch, looking east and up toward that slope failure. You can see the fence sticking up at the top. Again, Mexico on right, US on left. You cannot see all the way to the top of the hill in this picture. You can only see up to where the roadway turns north in picture 2 above. I'd guess the top of this cliff is about 200' up.

This pictures just can't do this place justice. It is a massive, amazing, beautiful place...if you just ignore the sewage. How lucky are we to work for a company which gives us the opportunity to work on these amazing projects?