Death Valley 2022/23

[Beardilocks]

Oh wow those are gorgeous!

Thanks!   This set was particularly nice.  It… felt good there.  Hard to explain.

[DAW89446]

Oh wow those are gorgeous!

Thanks!   This set was particularly nice.  It… felt good there.  Hard to explain.

Face it. Some people just love to be bloodied and battered ... 

[MojaveGeek]

The "Panamint Petros" are stunning. Nope, I don't know that location and your pix don't reveal anything. Must have been awesome to see them. Long hike in?

Now "Hellfire" canyon. Man, I saw that mention of blood, scrolled to the top and I thought that first map was covered with blood Were you with Brice? Sounds like a great place to not be solo. Crumbly and rough... beautiful though and after the fact it probably felt like fun. But 15 feet up, even over "soft" gravel, on crap like that would not be my cup of tea. At least you didn't break anything like that woman in Mosaic.

Keep on trucking!

[Kauri]

I’m very impressed how far you two were able to get up that side canyon, well done!!

Also sorry to hear about the repeated nasty falls. I should have mentioned to bring gloves on any hike in the Black Mountains; some of those rocks are knife-edge sharp. I’d typically bring leather work gloves on DV hikes and usually after about 3 weeks of use (equaling about two trips for us) the fingers would be totally destroyed. Better the gloves than my hands though! Also learned the hard way to wear thick work pants, and boots with leather upper parts. Falling and sliding through those little purple cacti, or sliding into a barrel or cholla cactus, then picking the thorns out of one’s skin, isn’t a lot of fun. Hopefully you haven’t had to do this yet!

Thanks again for sharing all the photos and data from the Hellfire main side canyon! Enjoying all your trip reports and photos!!

[Beardilocks]

I’ve hiked all over this park and I’ve had my fair share of “sight seeing” falls, where you’re just distracted for a second. And plenty of scree fields that were just straight up loose and predictably treacherous. This surface was a mixed bag. You never knew how long a step would hold. You might have grip enough for a step or just until weight shifted a millimeter. Same with any hand hold even really large pieces of the landscape, stuff you though was really solid would just pull off. Luckily none of it was too near drops. So it was mostly fun. With gloves and a couple of shovels zip tied to your feet it might be a new sport.

[Kauri]

Yep, I know that kind of terrain. If you go up either of the ridges to the north of Hellfire, I recall the ridgeline two north (on the other side of a small drainage) was like this, some footholds worked just fine and others would immediately slip even if they felt solid and I'd land on my hands. The ridge just north of the main canyon didn't seem as bad (though it might have just been *better* since that was our route down). The terrain around Funeral Slot Canyon seemed to be almost identical. I'm really wondering now if it's the same geological formation in these two areas.

[DAW89446]

I’ve hiked all over this park and I’ve had my fair share of “sight seeing” falls, where you’re just distracted for a second.

And you’ll really feel them years later after you turn 65. Ask me how I know … 

[Beardilocks]

The next day I took a little walk almost directly across the valley from Hellfire to explore some things in Chuckwalla Canyon.  I had seen what looked like a rather large grotto in a side canyon on satellite and it has been a long time since I was out to Chuckwalla Crater.  There were also a few other things I wanted to check out on the way in & out.  

For my time above the washes, I followed these old Native American trails.  I picked this one up about 1/2mi from Hanaupah Canyon Rd.  


Here is a very interesting intersection.  The left trail heads to Tule Spring.  The right (the one I came in on) heads in the direction of either Shorty or Bennett well.  One of the water sources to the south of Tule anyway. 


This is interesting.  I’ve always just dismissed random rock circles like this as either more modern fire rings or ancient food storage rings.  But many seemed to be in improbable locations for either.  It turns out many of them (like this one) were deadfall traps for catching small game.  Makes much more sense now.  


An interesting looking side canyon of Chuckwalla.  


Pretty little canyon


Nice white marble type dryfall. 


Huge bowl with a couple of different pour-overs.  


And interesting geology 




Looking back out of the bowl.  


Having found the walk up the wash in loose gravel tedious and without a decent view I thought I’d scale the 200ft ridge to the north and hike that down to Chuckwalla Crater.  A thought that definitely wouldn’t have occurred to me before I started hanging out with dirtbag peakbaggers.     As soon as I was about 25ft above the wash I ran into a very old trail.  It switchbacked up the ridge in a very relaxed way and made the climb very easy.  


Nice trail at the top as well.  Much easier than hiking the wash.  


After a while the crater came into view.  


It is essentially unknow what created the crater.  Charles Hunt is the only person I’ve come across that offers a solution from a scientific perspective:


The only anomaly I saw that would possibly contradict Hunt’s “probable” conclusion is the presence of grey/tan volcanic tuft type rock in fist or smaller pieces surrounding the crater not found anywhere else on the bench or wash.  But what do I know.  



Trail leading towards the crater 


Trail heading back towards the salt pan 


There are quite a few of these MONSTER boulders scattered across the fan between Hanaupah and Chuckwalla, ranging btw a couple of feet tall to 7-8ft tall.  Some have huge chunks scooped out from wind erosion.  This one seems to have been used as a shelter at some point, with a rounded rock wall still partially evident in front of it.  


And an old storage pit or deadfall trap at the back.  


The trail curves and wanders in a rather unusual way compared to a lot of the pre-contact trails I’ve hiked before. 


Another huge rock.  This one has an obvious deadfall trap next to it.  Which makes sense for two reasons: first, it’s easy to find your trap from a distance when it’s next to a huge rock. And two, there’s ample evidence of critters still living under the rock to this day. 




It’s really inspiring to walk these old trails and see the evidence of lives lived out here with such an amazing view.

[DAW89446]

This thread is becoming an overload of history, geology, scenery, photography. I want an iPhone and I want to be in Death Valley ...   I envy you.  Keep it coming!

[GowerGulch42]

Fantastic shots on both of those posts!