Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

With West Side Road having just opened up 48hrs before, after being closed since Hurricane Hilary in August, I had to run in and take a look.  The road is still closed on the north end making the typical 5 mile drive off pavement to Trail Canyon now 35 miles of pavement to the southern entrance and then 30mi or rough dirt road back north.  But that's just keeping the riff-raff and the lookie-loos out.  As well as ALL the campers but me!

The road is very nice up the fan right now.  I think a few good rainstorms will change that, but they did a nice job for now on this section.  Fair warning though if you wish to camp out here:  If you are in an even moderate clearance vehicle, bring a shovel and a strong back!  When they bulldozed the road, they left the 1-2ft berms along it's entirety.  So getting off the road to camp will take a bit of shovel work unless you're in something ridiculous like my 80-series. 


Up in the canyon itself, the road has defaulted back to where it was many decades ago.  Previous flood evens had created a trail up the wash that crossed the wash in a few places, sometimes holding to the left, right, or even center of the wash in recent years.  It was odd driving up and seeing myself actually driving on the “road” as it is shown on USGS.  When they rebuilt it they stuck to the old right of way that is still seen on the maps.  I was surprised by how clearly my memories came back when I was driving up the “wrong” side of the canyon. 


I did drive all the way to the top at the old mining camp (the name of which escapes me at the moment for some reason).  I didn't take any pics up there.  The road does take a… uh interesting route up & over a VERY steep bit of bank.  Even in the big 80 with tire pressure at 20psi I got a bit of wheel spin (unlocked) and it won't be long before that is a dug out mess.  The mine camp itself is… still there.  I didn't have time to explore much.

Again though, finding anywhere to camp past the mouth of the canyon will be tricky.  The berms are high and the road passes very few flat spots or even spots where you could pull off into the wash to turn around. 





The lake peeking through the gap on the way down. 


This MONSTER of a log.  It had to be at least 3ft around. 


I had the whole fan to myself for I think the first time ever.  I'm pretty sure that I had the whole eastern slope of the Panamints to myself actually...