Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

The next day we hiked out to some more LPB's in the Owlsheads.  Spoiler alert: we struck out.  But just being out here hiking into these remote & unvisited areas is amazing enough.  Chasing ghosts like this brings you out to all kinds of amazing areas that you would never see otherwise.  And almost no one has ever been in a lot of these areas.  At least not in 150yrs since the wave of prospectors came through looking for riches. 

The first hike of the morning was from a minor drainage near the end of the road & the radio/radar tower. 

Starting off the morning with a flower that I don't think I've seen before. 


Really pretty narrows as we enter the larger wash. 


Very tall cairn.  Likely left by prospectors. 


Then I stumbled across this sticking out of the wash.





The base read “CT Ham MFG No.0 Clipper”.  Complete they're going for about $60-80 online right now.  Looks like they made quite a few of them.  CT Ham was based out of Rochester NY (close to my origin point as well) and was making lamps in the late 1800's. 


Lots of very cool rocks today.  This one was doing it's best impression of wood grain. 


Looking back at the radio/radar array.


Looking toward the Quail Mountain Range and the road we came in on.


Now these are an odd duck.  We found literally dozens & dozens of these in one general area of the wash.  Way more than one usually finds of one style of container.  The odd tap on it wouldn't suggest gasoline or motor oil.  Lamp fuel?  Cooking oil?  Guessing the size was about 2.5-3gal. 


You can just sort of tell SOMETHING was written there.  I can't actually make anything out though.  There are zero mine or prospects on any of my maps in this entire area either.  But someone was making heaps of trash out here.


This is definitely a bit more than burro trail.  Since it is close to the can stash, I'm guessing that it was a mining trail of some kind.  Nothing obvious on satellite view though.


Looking towards Lost (Dry) Lake.


Here's where we were hoping to find a natural bridge. 


The way the canyon makes a J-shape here gives you at least a small chance that the water could punch through and make a bridge here, depending on the type of rock. 


Really cool twisty dryfall though. 


Second hike of the day was on the other side of the range overlooking Crystal Hills.  But the starting point was only a couple miles away from the first. 


Looking towards Wingate Dry Lake.  A future destination I hope. 


We found a whole section of canyon with these crazy rocks.  The concentric circles were everything from an inch to a foot in diameter.  And the color varied from brick to maroon to tan. 








Minor dryfall to downclimb. 


Alas, no bridge again.  But a really cool area to explore that would otherwise be unvisited. 


Crazy iridescence on this rock.  I'm not sure I've seen this before quite this loud. 


We had spotted a reflective something perpendicular to the wash on the hike in and thought it couldn't be anything other than a semi-reflective rock.  99.8% of the time that's the correct answer.  We took a slightly different route back and with the sun at a slightly different angle we could tell it was a whole freacking drone target that had somehow crash-landed mostly intact in a very odd way on the slope.


Crazy zoom distortion, but a better view.  Looks like it's hovering there.  Very weird. 


Finishing off with a couple shots of Crystal Hills and where I hiked the previous day. 





Amazing first hikes in the park.  Broke fresh ground and found some cool stuff.  Got to check out a road that no one had really been down yet since the flooding and had a gorgeous part of the park all to ourselves for a few days.  Perfect wild solitude.