Wingate Wash?

[edward]

If one was feeling froggy and wanted to make it a through hike, it's more like 22mi/4000ft gain to road at the base of the radar tower in the Owlsheads, skirting the base border, which would probably be a tough cross-wash hike.  Or it's about the same distance if you could get up and over to and cross Lost Lake.   Looks like a bit of a ridgeline there, but looks like a couple of the canyons are navigable on satellite.
 

For anyone's future reference: I did something similar on Saturday starting at the Lost Lake "trailhead", caching extra water and snacks - and changing into lighter hiking attire - at the north end of Lost Lake, then going over the ridgeline to the dry lake ("Wingate Dry Lake"?) a few miles to the east. Here is a view of that ridgeline from the northern end of Lost Lake:



The yellow dot on the left represents the location of a pass through which I followed burrow tracks to an overlook. The descent to Wingate Wash from there was steeper, but manageable. The yellow dot in the middle represents the location of a wider canyon through which I made the return ascent. I think there were two dry falls at the top that were only three or four feet high. The worse part returning to Lost Lake from that area was that there were what seemed to be countless washes and it was quite fatiguing at that point in the hike. The yellow dot on the right represents where those washes seem to run and also other routes down to Wingate Wash. I chose not to go that way because it would have added another 3 to 5 miles to get to the dry lake. Here are those first two routes:



View from the overlook:



Looking north from the south end of the dry lake, the old Jeep trail is still visible:



Lost Lake (not pictured) is one of my favorites, and this hike had some nice views of the southern end of the Panamint Range. If a person only wants to see the dry lake in Wingate Wash or explore more of Wingate Wash from the West, I would recommend starting from the Epsom Salt Mine trailhead. FWIW.