Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

In my never ending search into weird artifacts of Death Valley's past, I had heard a rumor that their used to be Camp Ground off of North Highway between Daylight Pass and Titus Canyon.  It was reportedly called Midway Well and was in operation in at least the 1970's.  I asked around a bit among NPS Staff, but unsurprisingly no one had heard of it. 

So I dug out the old 1960 USGS and found Midway Well listed on the map as well as a short spur road off the North Hwy.  Of course I went to see if there was any trace.


A time-period correct Coke bottle in the dune.


The ghost of the old road just barely visible.


For the most part the signs of a past life here mostly include old broken glass and the ghost of old firepits like this one.


And a few signs of old trails through the Mesquite bushes.


There we go!  That's what I was hoping for.  That picnic table has been out in the elements here for probably 60yrs.


Grader tooth on the table because of course. 


Really cool campsite preserved in time. 





Random gratutious shot of the Panamints as I drove back south that day. 


I'd love to hear if anyone remember staying there or has any old photos!

[DAW89446]

Cool find! Yup, thems were good ol’ days. I camped at Mesquite Springs campground on my honeymoon in 1974, in my parent’s VW camper van.

[MojaveGeek]

I was out there in 91 or 92. There used to be a well casing, visible from the pavement, that was a good landmark. And there's an old spring further out, shows on your old map. It was dry. We (my 5 yr old daughter and I) did not camp though. Nice light in your pix

[DAW89446]

You can barely see the table in GE. You can also follow an old alignment of the North Highway for many miles as well.

[Beardilocks]

I took a little sidequest that ended up bearing no fruit, but I thought that I would share anyway. 

I had spotted a small drylake on satellite that was surrounded by black volcanic rock (great for petroglyphs) and decided I had to at least take a look.  Nearby was the remnants of the old Grapevine Ranger's Station, so I looped that in as well. 

The old Grapevine Ranger's Station is on my 1960 USGS maps but not on my 1980 maps.  So I'm assuming it was moved somewhere in the late 60's or 70's. 

As you can see there's not much left.  A nice flat spot with foundations here for a building or parking


Some old pipe and various junk.  If we cleaned up camp as well as the old monument staff did we'd be arrested.  Lol. 


The old road out of the former Ranger's station going up to the spring that supplied it with water.


Not as wet as it used to be, but there was some water and greener life further down the wash.


Up-wash from the spring there was a nice tight little canyon that I wandered up. 


After a couple of nice tight turns I hit this grotto/dryfall.  It definitely could have been climbed but this canyon was a sidequest within a sidequest. 


I climbed a different drainage and came out into this wide wash/dry-lake.


I then proceeded over the hill on the right in above photo to get to the dry-lake that was my target. 


Cute place but absolutely zero signs of life, habitation, travel, or even so much as burro passing through.  Other than the 1937 benchmark on the south corner or the lake. 


I decided to hit Mesquite BM since I was there. 

This is not the benchmark and I have no idea what it signifies.  BM is up the hill to the right.


Nice view of Mesquite Springs Campground and the northern end of the Cottonwoods.


Looking south towards Tucki and SPW.


Interesting piece of the old infrastructure but I struck out on anything older.

[Beardilocks]

I have been continuing my exploration and mapping of an undisclosed area of Death Valley trying to get a clearer picture of ancient habitation in the area.  Apologies for weird cropping and blacked out horizons, but this place needs to be kept under wraps. 


One of the first things I found on this trip in was this structure that I'm going to call a geoglyph or a rock alignment.  Usually I just classify these as “rock circles” because they're too vague of purpose to determine if they were used as the base for a temporary structure or as just a basic form of rock alignment.  With the addition of the center scrapped clean and mounded in the middle, this qualifies more as bonafide rock alignment or a geoglyph.


It's really hard to say how much of the rocks around it were originally making the walls higher or if they are exactly where they belong as part of the geoglyph.


A bit further down the same ridge I found this small double petroglyph.  Petroglyphs are few and far between out here.  I'm unsure if there's any meaning to their distribution, though some seem to show a pattern. 





This area is littered with trails.  So it was especially odd to find this little glyph in the middle of nothing out here.  No trails or anything else at all anywhere nearby. 


It appears to have quite some age to it as well. 


There are so many low-walled hunting blinds out here that I have literally stopped counting.  Or photographing them. 


Some are a bit more odd though.  For instance they rarely use a large stone that was already part of the landscape.  Likely because the odds are low that there's already a rock exactly where you want to hunt. 


It's also rare for there to be a petroglyph at a hunting blind. 


As small as simple as this one may be…


This one is odd.  Not really tall enough to be a hunting blind and some of the stones are sunk/partially buried in the ground.  Strange zig-zag pattern as well.  Another rock alignment?


Very circular blind, which is also unusual. 


Small glyph.


That is oddly dropped into whatever this is.  Collapsed blind?  Just natural rock scatter?


Several random dots pecked out of the other side. 


This is very interesting.  This is the highest point of this part of the ridge.  The walls here are taller and more robust than most circles you see.  I have also never seen this exaggerated opening/doorway on any rock circles before.  As this is pushing the limits on how tiny a house can be (I could lay in it but only if my feet hung out the “doorway”) I would almost guess that this was some kind of shrine or spiritual place.  By now it was pouring rain and photography was getting more difficult.  Lol. 


This is also one of only 2 places in my last 3 hikes up here that I have found lithic scatter. 


A little ways further down the ridgeline from the house/shrine I found the largest pictograph panel that I have found yet in this area.  I have to question whether it was positioned to face the nearby spring or if it was just carved in situ, coincidentally pointed that way. 

Either way it is covered in glyphs.








You can see there are at least 2 distinct stages of patina in the carvings and possibly 3.  The carving is also rather complex and seems almost cohesive. 


I always have to stop and ask if this represents a map.  Or the journey from somewhere else.  The layering of older and newer carvings adds to the mystery. 





The hilltop closest to this set of petroglyphs was absolutely covered in cairns.  Which is unusual in & of itself.


Not very far away I found another large panel, but this one is very old.  I don't think I've ever seen this style of circles and lines packed so tightly together before.  Not in DV and definitely not in this area. 


With a bonus strange little section wrapping around the edge. 


This is another oddity to the area.  A large rock placed horizontally with small rocks stacked under it to make it level, almost like a tiny table.  When I saw the first I thought was just coincidence.  This is the 3rd or 4th. 


Two of the design elements here I would see again later:  the “eyes” and the small 90deg corner.


Side of the neighboring rock.


This is an odd rock circle.  I'm fairly certain that the creosote wasn't there when it was made.  It is very deep and built up on the downslope so that the top is fairly level. 


I almost tripped over this one or I would never have seen it.  It's the only petroglyph on a light colored rick I've seen out here yet.  And the “eyes” again. 


And here is a return of the 90deg little corner design.  And also… there's wifi?? 


The majority of these larger rocks are have the carvings facing away from the trail and generally pointed towards a spring.  There is no real way to tell if that's coincidence or design. 


This very old little glyph is along one of the larger trails in the area.  The only glyph I have found yet on a low trail, although I'm sure there are others.  But certainly nothing on the magnitude of Sauerkraut Trail. 


I ended up naming this particular ridge “Cairnage Ridge”.  Haha.  It was covered in dozens if not hundreds of very large cairns, many of which had fallen over with the passing of time.  (Excuse the lack of photographic proof here, but it was very easy to glean the location from this ridge.)  The ridge overlooks a particularly nice spring in a tight canyon.  The perfect place for an ambush if you could herd the sheep up canyon.  I have read about this practice and there's actually a quote from John Muir who witnessed this among Coso Tribes:  “...to build rows of dummy hunters out of stone, along ridge-tops which they wished to prevent sheep from crossing.  And without discrediting the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective; for a few live Indians moving excitedly among them, they could hardly be distinguished at a little distance from men, by anyone not in on the secret.”




The rest of this glyph is lost.


One of the larger glyphs in this part of the search area. 


With a bonus on the side.  There are 4 or 5 rocks out here with a large/complex glyph on the front and a single circle off on one side. 


This is either a larger rock alignment or two conjoined hunting blinds that randomly connect to cleared circle.  Lol.  My money is on a rock alignments.  You have the S-shaped tail of the larger rocks and the cleared circle surrounded by smaller rocks. 


Guessing that used to be a taller wall. 


This circle also appears to have a purposeful opening.  This is only the second site in the area with lithic scatter.


I lifted up the sole white rock in the middle of the circle to see if any offerings were left under it.  All I found was this tiny baby scorpion, maybe 1/4in long.  I hope I haven't offended the scorpion spirit….


Odd tall cairn with an enclosed circle. 





Another rock circle.  Is the one stone in the middle on purpose or something that fell in later.  I didn't look under this one for larger scorpions.


This has a clearly chipped out sphere at the top and I think something was drawn out underneath it but I can't make it out now.  There was also a small carving on the side. 


Very large hunting blind. 



That sums up 2 full days hiking out here.  Hundred of cairns, hundreds of hunting blinds, maybe a dozen rock circles, 4 or 5 rock alignments, and a smattering of petroglyphs.  I'm sure there is much more to discover out here.  I have no idea the actual extent of the site yet.

I was talking to a friend the other day and they said “If there were all these people out here doing all this, where were they living and sleeping?”  Interesting thought.  There are several lower, softer benches that are much flatter and much more conducive to setting up a camp than where the hunting was done here.  I have scoured maybe a dozen of those likely sites and found nothing of interest.  It's possible that the most comfortable locations were in the washes near the springs and all evidence of those habitation sites have since washed away.  But it is an interesting piece of the puzzle that is missing.

[MojaveGeek]

Nice stuff. Good photos.

[Bluegreen kayak]

I'm glad you posted the pictures from both trips, the "fruitless" one and the other. And I really appreciate the quote from John Muir; it helped me understand what might have been going on with all the strange rocks. Your trip reports gladden my mornings, thank you. As Kipling wrote, "Good hunting!"

[GowerGulch42]

Wow, really neat stuff. That dry lake you visited is formed by the Northern Death Valley fault, one of the largest in California! Last major earthquake in the area was probably about 2,000-2,200 years ago, so if those cairns are anywhere between Furnace Creek and Last Chance Canyon, it's not unreasonable to say they are at least that old and possibly toppled by said earthquake.

[Beardilocks]

I'll start out by admitting that this trip was heavily under-documented.  But the most epic trips can be the hardest to capture. 

I had been waiting to thread this adventure in in between weather systems and other issues that complicate dirtbag-life.  We had had a nice warm week or two in Death Valley National Park without any precipitation that melted off a bit of the snow cover at higher elevations, but there was another storm looming on the horizon (what would become the Sierra Nevada Blizzard of 2024, dumping over 10ft of snow and 190mph recored wind gusts in the mountains).  So we headed out to see if we could squeeze this adventure in between.. 

And that was a big question:  Could we make it?  The start of our route, on the north end of Saline Valley Rd, was a known (if very washboarded) quantity.  That road was heavily travelled down to the Warm Springs this time of year no matter what the conditions (even if the Navy has to chopper out stuck drivers occasionally).  Past that we had to head down the rough old mining road in Marble Canyon (reports from 2-3mo ago said it was passable before Feb 4-7 atmospheric river that hit the park) before turning off into Jackass Canyon and on to Jackass Flats, for which the most recent road report I could dig up was about 3 years old (or about 4 floods ago haha).  THEN there was one more pass down to the dry lake where the hike would hopefully start. 

But first was a 200 mile drive across DV and over Towne Pass, up 190/136 to Lone Pine, onto 395 up to Big Pine, and finally into the Northern most part of DVNP. 

I arrived after sundown deep in Marble Canyon on Saline Valley Rd and crashed at an old mine camp for the night.  I met up with Brice the next morning to see how far in we could make it. 

Marble Canyon Rd was rough and heavily rearranged from the floods of the past few years, but was showing tracks of recent visitation and was passable, if a bit interesting in spots.  The turn off into Jackass Canyon showed no sign that anyone had attempted it since Hurricane Hilary hit last summer.  Jackass Canyon is a tight, rough and rocky, if short, gatekeeper to all that is beyond.  I would say that it's folly to attempt it anything short of a modified high clearance 4wd.  A smaller, lighter stock HC 4wd might make it ok.  But leave the Subaru at home.  The biggest hurdle is a gigantic boulder that has fallen into the canyon, giving you barely 6ft between it and a solid rock wall.  With spotting and careful driving (and a couple of attempts) we got my 80-series and Brice's 5th Gen 4Runner through, but only with an inch or two to spare.  The rest of the canyon is very rough. 

And I was so focused on getting through that I took no pictures.  I warned you this trip was woefully documented…  I did film it on the way out, so see the video below for footage going through the canyon.  All I have from the way in is a couple of crappy screen caps from a dash cam video.



Boulder is 3.5-4ft tall. 


And here's a couple of pics of the top of the canyon from the way back out. 




After squeezing through Jackass Canyon, the road winds it's way over several small hills before it crests a small ridge out onto Jackass Flats.  And boy is it gorgeous. 





On the ~6.5 mile drive across the beautiful Jackass Flats it was apparent that virtually no one has been out here in decades, the road overgrown in sections by pin-stripe-happy bushes and undercarriage-scrubbing brush. We reached the end of the road at a Wilderness Boundary to take a warm up/sidequest hike to Crest Benchmark.  What we had been hoping would be a 3mi hike became a 7mi hike because the road ended earlier than expected.  It's still a nice wash hike followed by gorgeous views of Eureka Peak (the target for the next day) on one side and the snowy Inyo Mountains on the other side with bonus views of the Saline Valley dunes. 

Odd mining trash on the way in.  Some sort of sifting screen I would imagine.


We weren't sure which finger of the ridge was Crest BM so we hit every one of them for good measure.  Haha. 








Every once in a while we'd hit an area carpeted in obsidian flakes, where ancient people had stopped to rest or camp and chip down the obsidian chunks they'd quarried somewhere.  I have seen similar spots in Saline Valley, Eureka Valley, and a few other spots in the Northern end of the park with heavy obsidian lithic scatter, which is fairly rare in the area in general.  Someday I'll have to track down the source...


We returned to the vehicles and headed back up Jackass Flats to the last unknown road before we got to the jumping off point for our hike the next day, a road Gaia calls De Coster Cabin Rd.  Google turns up nothing on the name De Coster and there are no mines or prospects shown on the USGS in this whole hidden valley or the surrounding hills.  The road was washed out in several places and a bit flexy in spots, but passable for us.

But there is definitely a cabin. 


It took me way way too long to get Hotel Hanta.  As in Hantavirus. 


I would later find the tailgate for what I believe is the same vehicle several miles away. 











And with that we camped on the edge of the dry lake (more of a tumbleweed lake really) for the night and turned in early to get an early start on Eureka Peak in the morning. 


We were off across the dry lake, cursing the thorny tumbleweeds, not long after the sun came over the ridgeline.  The view as we crossed over the saddle into the drainage of the next drylake was absolutely stunning. 


Dropping the 1000ft over about 3.5mi down to the next drylake, we found another sea of tumbleweeds. This area has a very unique geology and is dotted with these small small dry lake beds separated by smallish ridges.  Some drained into Eureka Valley and some drained into Saline Valley. 


I made it over this ridge, another drylake, another ridge, and onto the slopes of Eureka Peak only to have to throw in the towel about 2mi from my goal of the summit.  A lingering knee injury that's been haunting me all winter forced me to make the tough call to bail on the last steep climb to the summit in the interest of making the 6.5mi hike back out in one piece.  Next time Eureka Peak, next time. 

I wandered over the beautiful terrain while Brice made the summit and met up with me eventually on the way back up the long drainage between dry lakes. 

But it was the most beautiful scenery one could hope to be limping through.


Attack of the Tumbleweeds.  Between these (and another thorny bush that I managed to trip over my own hiking pole and fall into) I had to do some serious plier/tweezer work to do on my lower legs when I got back to my truck...


We made it back to the trucks with about 40min of daylight left.  On the whole it was about 13 miles of hiking and 2500ft of gain for me, a bit more for those that made it to the peak.  I settled in for some rest and a big meal before we headed out (hopefully) ahead of the storm the next day. 


And here is the abridged version of the drive out.  About 1.5hrs compressed down to about 6min.  When I get some wifi somewhere I may try to upload the longer 20min version in case anyone wants to veg out to muted diesel noises, occasional cursing, and great driving views.