Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

Keeping up with my Road Condition Report from my last post, here's Johnson Canyon.  (Hanuapah is still closed for some reason.)  Johnson is quite a bit rougher than Trail Canyon but not bad.  The biggest issue slowing progress up Johnson Canyon is that the operator maybe had too much float on his blade?  Every time it hit a decent sized rock it skipped the whole blade up & down.  Giving you a strange like super-sized washboard with a long wavelength.  Not the kind of teeth-rattler washboard but more like the whole truck hopping up & down like a low-rider in sections.  Not terrible but slowed me way down.  I unfortunately did not drop into the wash to continue up to the trailhead for Hungry Bill's, as I only just made it back to the truck before sundown.  I'm quite sure it's been pushed through all the way to the end though.  Every canyon has been.

There are so so many trails out here.  I'm sure some are Native American, some prospector, some animal.  But they make scaling the huge benches out here so lovely. 





This odd geologic anomaly has always stood out to me from across the valley.  I want to at least vaguely check it out & see if it's worth a deep dive at a later date. 


The canyons that cut around the edges of the large sandstone mass are beautifully sculpted. 





And holding quite a lot of water still.  These tinajas would have been well used by early inhabitants of the valley.


You can see the old gravel height in the canyon here.  This was evident in at least a half dozen places.  The recent floods may have really cleaned out these chutes!


Very odd conglomerate here. 


Looking into the main canyon that splits this huge sandstone dome.  I wonder how far one could get up it without rope.


I thought this feature was ...uh, interesting.  I dubbed it “The Cosmic Toilet”.  Because it reminded me of a cross between the Cosmic Ashtray in Southern UT and Paul Bunyan's Potty in Canyonlands NP.  And it looks like a toilet seat. 




There seem to be quite a lot of springs or seeps in the sandstone formation. 





Coming to you from INSIDE the Cosmic Toilet. 


I'm really curious what this huge bowl back there looks like.  It seems to hit a pretty huge dryfall to stop progress circling the dome.  I wasn't close enough to see if there was an easy bypass. 


I was surpised to find this section of fencing next to this spring.  You don't see a lot of barbed wire in Death Valley outside mining camps. 






With all the springs and seeps and tinajas, it was no real surprise to find an ancient shelter, albeit a small one.  According to Hunt's study of the area, there are quite a few ancient 'campsites' in the area.  Although anything she visited was stripped of anything of interest.  (Photo is out of order to protect the location of the site. Was it even in this area?  Or up Trail Canyon???)


The proof of occupation:  a mortero & mano still in place. 




A really cool geologic feature that I think I'll need to explore more in depth when I have more time.  Way too many hidden nooks & crannies to explore in one outing.