Death Valley Petroglyph search

I want to start today by pointing out that it’s now Monday, May 19th in Death Valley.  We ran a race two, long hot days ago.  Jared still has the same shirt on from the race.  Not saying anything, just wanted to point that out for all my little readers out there who may have overlooked it in the rush of reading this ravishingly remarkable report.

So, we awoke and it was already over 90 degrees by 7:30 in the morning.  Gant continued his stewardship of public lands that morning and then we hiked the dune.  It was high and hot, it was scenic and slow but it was fun.  Jared for some reason went native and hiked most of the way without his sandals.  The difference in temperature between the sunny side of the sand and the shady sides was palpable and I understand why he wound up like this quite often.  We eventually hit what could be considered the high point of the dunes, as long as you didn’t look to the West to see the slightly higher point that was much further away.

After we cleared the dunes it was on to a Death Valley Petroglyph search.  Gant, ever the skeptic didn’t believe that it existed.  So, we found the area in question and started hiking and looking for clues.  I was occasionally picking up two separate sets of footprints heading in the direction that told me that we were going the right way.  There is literally no reason for anyone to have been out there, except to look at this petroglyph canyon, so the footsteps were a big confidence booster for me.  But I eventually lost them, Jared caught up to me while I was looking for the prints and he found the entrance shortly.  I’ll not tell you where this is, nor will I describe it’s location outside of the clues already given.  Just a warning if you find it though, you will be watched while approaching.

It is a wonderfully tight little canyon with some great petroglyphs, all the more so because it’s so out of the way and off the beaten path.  There’s a bit of a hike required to reach the canyon from the nearest road and then entering the canyon there’s a series of obstacles to scramble over.  The obstacles get progressively harder until you hit a small bowl in the canyon.  Thankfully, the Indians apparently were also often stuck in this bowl and littered the walls with artwork.  Unfortunately none of us brought a rope and as a group we were unable to continue past the very slick, approximately 20 foot high section of water polished rock that led up out of the bowl section.

Jared, working with a boost was able to scale the waterfall and scouted up ahead and told us of a few more obstacles above.  According to to the story we heard about this canyon is that at the top there is supposed to be a bighorn sheep skull.  Jared came back reporting that he had gotten stuck at another waterfall section and had not seen any skulls.  After quite a few failed attempts and a bloodied knee I made it up that waterfall unassisted and continued scouting beyond where Jared had stopped.

It was a very serene place, as I got further and further away from the group the canyon grew quieter and quieter.  I could no longer hear any voices, all I was left with was the walls painted by untold hands ages ago.  Whatever hardy souls made a life in Death Valley had left there mark on those walls and it was humbling to behold.  For as strong as they were as a people to survive there, they are gone.  They, who climbed higher than I could and drew on rocks where I could not are gone.  The humbling aspect was that these strong people are gone and all that remains of them is the marks they made.

I never did see the bighorn skull.  I turned around and went back, I was afraid of getting hurt and nobody being able to hear me since I couldn’t hear them.  I’ll get to that skull though, someday.

We returned to camp after this little excursion.

The next day we awoke, and started driving home.  We stopped and hiked mosaic canyon along the way, at least some of us did while others napped (At least he changed that filthy stinky shirt).

Death Valley is a humbling place, I need more of it.

Here is an album of pictures from this trip.

We awoke in Grandview campground, in the White Mountains.  I’ve sung it’s praises enough previously, but it really is nice.  The only plans we had were to drive up and see the Bristlecone pines and then drive out to the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley to camp that night.  So, there was no rush as Gant and Holly matched wits that morning over the squared circle in an intense game of checkers as Jared and I packed our trash.

We eventually got to going and encountered a barricade saying the road was closed.  I personally wanted to see the Patriarch grove, rather than the Schulman grove so we went around the barricade and made some progress on the road despite the warnings.  There were snow patches that were manageable thanks to some hard work, but we eventually hit a dead end and had to return to the lower Schulman grove.  I’ve still, to this day not done the entire Methusulah trail hike and we started that but there was a bit too much snow to follow it easily so we took the old cabin trail back to the truck.

After that we filled the gas tank and Jared and I took a quick dip in the Owens.  Much to my dismay, the old rope swings have been torn down and now it’s just a jump in from shore.  Holly and Gant decided that a cool, refreshing dip in the river was not on their agenda and instead stayed stinky and sweaty throughout the remainder of the trip.

We eventually got to the Eureka dunes (Second highest dunes in the US, after some shit in Colorado that has a homoerotic name).  Jared played up my fear of snakes by throwing a belt at me, well done my good sir.  Then we got there and everyone was all depressed or something because it was hot, in Death Valley, in May.  I wanted to hike to the top of the dunes but no one wanted to.  So we played catch instead.

After playing catch, I went for a little hike into the wilderness.  Much like the baby jebus did when he was in his 30’s if I remember right.

Gant and Holly stayed up late into the night cooking some crazy concoctions.  Jared and I brought some meat, some skewers and were done cooking, eating and asleep before those two kids were done cooking.  I can’t say I don’t appreciate a good warm meal, but honestly hunger is the best sauce, sleep is the best dessert.  The faster I can get my food, the happier I am personally.  Plus cleanup and dishes and all that tomfoolery is just not my cup o’ tea I suppose.  But, to each their own.

Bridgeport, CA.  MWTC

There were four of us and a truck bed full of gear leaving Gorman.  Truck being one of the key words in that sentence with gas prices being well above $4 a gallon for the entirety of the trip.  This was a big trip including five days of camping from the Sierra Nevada to Death Valley and excursions ranging from sand dune climbing to hiking around the remains of what used to be the second largest city in California.  We played catch in hundred degree plus temperatures and found a secret canyon in Death Valley with a plethora of petroglyphs.  The trip was based around going to run the Mountain Warfare Training Challenge 10k in Bridgeport, CA.

We left Gorman at a pretty decent hour on Friday.  We drove to Bishop and stopped by Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light gallery then ate dinner at the mexican food place just behind it.  After dinner we continued north, Gant has some buddies who are camphosts up at Convict Lake in the Sierra Nevada.  They had arranged to have one of their nicest sites available for us to use the night before the race.  We pulled in, found our spot and setup camp.  Convict Lake was a really nice campground, though it’s obviously popular and overpopulated for my tastes in general.

We went for a little dinner digestion hike around the lake until we were blocked by snow on the path and then called it a night.

Our overall plan was to get up to the Big Pine lakes basin and remain there until Sunday morning when we would pack back to the truck and head home. Once we got to the basin there would be plenty of scenery and potential areas to explore, while leaving basecamp right in the middle, or packing it with us on a daily basis. This plan was to change though, because of one route-finding mistake.

Once we stepped off, right out of the parking lot the snow was deep. It was still relatively early in the day, so it was still hard from freezing overnight but was largely unconsolidated, which is hard to walk through even with snowshoes. We took an early break to setup a “before” picture right after the first falls, this break was a bit on the long side and hadn’t really been earned, since we were only hiking for about 20 minutes to get to this point, but it did feel good. The sun was warm and the air was cool, the view of the palisades was inspiring and the young day was looking promising overall.

As we hiked on we missed, more appropriately I missed, the critical junction of the trail we were on and the one that would take us up on the east side of the creek we were following. Mistakenly, I identified a pair of ski tracks heading over to the west side of the creek as the trail we should follow. I knew the trail we wanted was on the east side, but since I saw no sign of it we followed those tracks, which appeared to be at least a week old. On the east side of the river, we faced a horrific climb; over just more than 1/10th of a mile, we climbed over 140 vertical feet. Needless to say, at the top of that rise we were both spent.

So, at just over 3 miles and 3 hours into the day we found ourselves well short of my original goal for the first night, but too tired to continue on. We dropped our packs in a grove of trees with relatively shallow snow and took a well deserved break. After a little while we decided to explore the surrounding area a bit to see if we could find a good spot to setup camp. The winds had really been howling that day, so we were looking for a spot that offered as much protection as possible. Leaving our packs behind, we hiked north along the trail we were pioneering, since the ski tracks had long since disappeared.

After a small, very nice hike without the packs we figured that we could move further up in the canyon without too much difficulty. For the most part it was flat up there and as tired as we were, it didn’t look too insane. So after much gnashing of teeth, we put the packs back on and continued on through the snow, which had softened throughout the day which allowed us to sink in even deeper with each step. We only made it a couple more miles before finding an excellent spot in a place called Cienega Mirth. This spot had great access to the creek for fresh water; it was shielded from the wind and was well off the trail (since we had been well off the trail all day long…).

We dug out a tent pit, a kitchen, a bathroom and a shoddy system of trails between each spot and then fired up dinner. After eating there wasn’t much to do as we were both tired, beaten down and completely wore out after our hike up the hill. We got into the tent, got situated, realized the floor we had dug out wasn’t as flat as it could have been but didn’t care enough to do anything about it. We were asleep within minutes.

Friday

Friday morning arrived, right on schedule and we dragged our sorry asses out of the tent and back into the world. Since it would take a terrific amount of motivation and effort to move our campsite into the basin where we had planned for it to go originally, we made a change to the plan. What we would do instead was to just dayhike up through the canyon we were in and into the Lakes Basin to see the lakes, the Palisade glacier, the Palisade Crest and anything else that looked entertaining. Sounded easy enough, no packs on our backs, just snowshoes, camera gear and some grub.

We left camp and followed the river up less than a 1/3rd of a mile and found a summertime Ranger cabin. We crossed the river on a convenient log at that point and found the trail that we were supposed to have been following since yesterday. We followed this trail as far as it went, before it petered out too, there really isn’t much if any traffic up there during the winter, so the trails are quite indistinct.

Eventually, we found 1st lake; saw where 2nd lake was and the general layout of the basin. The Palisades were unfortunately just out of view, behind Temple Crag, the Inconsolable range wasn’t showing us its highest peak, Cloudripper and the lakes themselves were pretty solidly frozen over. Nevertheless, it was a fine spot to stop and enjoy the thin air, clear skies and empty shores of the lake. We were perched on some old structure, but we couldn’t figure out what it had ever been used for. Not too long into our break, we saw the only other human we would see on this trip. His name was David and he was ski mountaineering with his dog, Teton up to Mt. Sill. With his skis on and being able to follow our freshly broken trail he had made it to 1st lake in less than a day and had another four or five miles to go before he’d set up camp.

He broke with us for a bit, and then set off again over the frozen lake. After he was gone, we followed his tracks out onto the lake, took some pictures and started the uneventful hike back. The only thing left to consider was what we were going to do on Saturday. Since our camp was in a canyon, miles from the lakes basin, we only had one direction to go for dayhikes and no desire to move camp up to the basin. The one direction we had to go was how we had just got to first lake. If we wanted to follow our same tracks, that would be no problem, but then we’d just be seeing the same scenery (not that I have anything against any scenery in the Sierra) over again.

In the end we decided that packing up camp and hiking back to the truck to call it an early weekend was a good plan. Along the way home we would travel through Death Valley though, to take a look at some completely different landscapes and experience wildly different temperatures than what we had been through for the last two days though.

So Friday night we took some time to take sunset pictures, none of which really came out (for me at least), had some dinner, some hot chocolate and just relaxed with fresh socks and booties on in the kitchen area. As night came it got colder and colder, so we eventually got into the tent and tried to sleep. I did learn a new trick at this point though, in the past I would boil some hot water and fill my Nalgene with it then put that in my sleeping bag to warm it up before I got in. This time, I boiled water and partially filled up my CamelBak bladder and put that in my sleeping bag. When I got into the bag, I noticed that this worked extremely well as a hot pad on sore muscles and bones.

Saturday

Saturday morning again came on time, we had been in our sleeping bags for exactly 12 hours when we got out and I had successfully used a piss bottle so I didn’t have to gear up, go outside into the howling cold night and piss. Anyway, after those long 12 hours in sleeping bags in the tent we once again moved back into the real world. We broke camp and started following the real trail back to the truck. Along the way we noticed that I missed the trail junction by only 10 or 20 feet. The trail we followed back to the truck had some fresh mountain lion tracks heading in our direction. They continued all the way down to the parking lot, where we were able to get into regular clothes, shoes and relax for a bit.  We never did see the cat though.

We took the drive out to Death Valley, met some interesting people, were afraid of other people and took a hike up the Eureka sand dunes. We then tried to get to Scotty’s Castle, but it was closed by the time we got there. After this we drove back to Orange County.

Photo Album of trip