2020-10-21, 06:08 PM
The comment about "hand written on topo maps..."
Many years ago I started exploring Panamint Valley and found there were springs (Tuber, Surprise, Happy...). I wondered if there were any north of highway 90? Back then maps were not online, but my school had a map library with all the paper topos. I found the right one, and there, up Dolomite Canyon, was hand printed in pencil an X and WATER. I made a color copy (we had an early color copier) and...
That year I went up with my daughter looking for it. We got to where the X was, but found nothing. It appeared to be in the canyon, but we found nothing. WTF?
Years later, with my wife-to-be Kathy, we were up walking from Towne Pass over to Towne Peak and looking out over the canyon we saw.. a white thing down in the canyon. Looked like a white water tank!
Someone I knew used to ramble around the PV and I gave him the info. He went looking, climbed a few local hills, found nothing, sent pix.
In the mean time I learned that a retired geology prof at my school used to do field work in DV.
I took the photos I had of the white thing from above, drew a few sight lines on the topo based on features in the background, and identified a location as a canyon fork about 1/2 mile upstream from where it was marked (remember, the mark was likely pre-GPS). I eventually got there with my hiking buddy Eric. It was a guzzler. Indeed, a white tank, with a dam upstream and metal pipe feeding to the tank, and a guzzler with a float valve hanging off that. Not quite functional at the time.
Probably took a decade to finish that quest! But it was fun to finally find the WATER
Many years ago I started exploring Panamint Valley and found there were springs (Tuber, Surprise, Happy...). I wondered if there were any north of highway 90? Back then maps were not online, but my school had a map library with all the paper topos. I found the right one, and there, up Dolomite Canyon, was hand printed in pencil an X and WATER. I made a color copy (we had an early color copier) and...
That year I went up with my daughter looking for it. We got to where the X was, but found nothing. It appeared to be in the canyon, but we found nothing. WTF?
Years later, with my wife-to-be Kathy, we were up walking from Towne Pass over to Towne Peak and looking out over the canyon we saw.. a white thing down in the canyon. Looked like a white water tank!
Someone I knew used to ramble around the PV and I gave him the info. He went looking, climbed a few local hills, found nothing, sent pix.
In the mean time I learned that a retired geology prof at my school used to do field work in DV.
I took the photos I had of the white thing from above, drew a few sight lines on the topo based on features in the background, and identified a location as a canyon fork about 1/2 mile upstream from where it was marked (remember, the mark was likely pre-GPS). I eventually got there with my hiking buddy Eric. It was a guzzler. Indeed, a white tank, with a dam upstream and metal pipe feeding to the tank, and a guzzler with a float valve hanging off that. Not quite functional at the time.
Probably took a decade to finish that quest! But it was fun to finally find the WATER