March trip

[MojaveGeek]

We had 9 hiking days, a nice amount of time, based out of SPW.  On this trip, we didn't blaze many trails - every place but one we went to I'd found some info online about it.  So thanks to Kauri, John Morrow, Bob Burd (who doesn't even post here) and, I'm sure others.  I will add that I am having increasing concern about interaction between social media, etc., and environmental damage in sensitive places.   Certainly apps like Alltrails result in much more concentrated use than anything we post here, but whatever we do post, it's up there for the world to see, pretty much forever.  Yet, I have gotten so much out of sharing things with members of this community.  So I'm going to be vague in places, going forward, but if you are someone who does post and share here, I'll be happy to give you more details privately.

OK, to day 1.   Hot in the valley, so go high.  Up to Wildrose Canyon and up to Hummingbird spring.   This hike has been on the list forever, and it's a nice one.   Old road is out in the open for a while but then you get into pinyon / juniper forest and some shade and a nice trail up to the spring. 



I didn't take any pix of the spring.   It's pretty choked up with vegetation, though we did get to flowing water tied in to some pipes.   From the ridge next to the spring you get a good view as a lunch stop.   I saw Clark's Nutcrackers there which I do not recall having seen in the Panamints?   On the way down we followed the road a little ways to the old superintendent's summer house (or so I've read) which is an interesting ruin with a great view.



The next day turned out to be a bit wild.   Back up to Wildrose canyon, and we parked just a bit up from the campground.  The topology is interesting because Wildrose is mostly a NW/SE canyon, but the ones to the north (A, Nemo, Wood) are E/W.  So there is a big ridge at the foot of Wildrose.  We walked up its base on an old road (pretty marginal old road, but the burros use it and that makes a usable trail) to a mining area.  Along the way we saw pieces of the Skidoo water pipeline - I'd actually found these using satellite images.  I wanted to go there, but it is really steep - probably the only reason those pieces are still there.



The way ascended quite a bit, with views behind and to the wst.



We got up to an old mining site, with a standing cabin.



From here the plan was to go up over the ridge, down the A Canyon side a bit, and then cross back over.  I was sure I had spied a miners' trail from the cabin up to the workings up canyon, bypassing a steep gorge, on the east side.  We climbed up but could not find it, so just trudged on. This was a mistake, as we had to loop around a number of big gullies.  It would have been much easier to just go up the ramp on the other side of the canyon.  We burned a bunch of time on this, eventually coming to some more recent workings and a trashy dozer road to crest the ridge.



Then we popped over into the A Canyon side.
 


We followed the dozer road, which eventually became a clearer but still rough road, where I expected to find burro trails back over the ridge.  Well on the ground I could not see what I saw from the air, so we had to just go cross country - which was not bad, travel in that area is easy.   Along the way, we found some more sections of the pipeline.  These were 1/4 mile from where the pipe had been laid, and must have been moved to this location for some unknown reason.



So the trick from here was to find a place we could cross over the main ridge and not have crazy steep stuff to go down, like that image of the pipeline.   It was here that the slope angle shading on the topo was helpful, and we also found a good burro trail which took the sensible route.  We followed, and got back to the car a bit before dark.   Note that just where that old road starts up the canyon is an area which is closed to access, presumably to protect the Wildrose water supply, but we had no trouble walking around it.

Day 3 was cooler so we went to Pothole Canyon.  Kauri (and some canyoneering sites) document the access.  Around here  I should point out that a few weeks earlier, hiking solo in Zion, I'd had an uncontrolled slide down some slickrock and came down hard on my right knee, which is still painful a month later.   So I was not up for hikes quite as long as is my custom; we simply parked at the bend in the SPW/Cottonwood road (which was quite sandy) and walked in to the base of the falls.  This involves a long trudge of 3-4 miles across the slowly rising desert flats, but it is easy walking with views all the way.



I was getting ready to be unimpressed as we started up the canyon and it took a bend, but lo, the potholes in the big drop at the end are pretty cool, and make a Picasso-esque face from some angles.



The twisted strata in this canyon are pretty cool.  Serious canyoneers climb up the ridge to the north and drop in to the canyon a ways upstream, then rapelling down the potholes, but for us, the view from the bottom was good enough.   There had been some thought of going up the ridge a bit for more views but, nah, I was happy to be able to just hobble out  and back to the car.  Some amazing blowing sand on the way out, plumes of sand blowing over the berm in the road and up into the air.