When in my profound ignorance I started my heavyweight backpacking "career", I planned Badwater to Telescope as a 3 day backpacking trip: 2 days up; 1 day down. When I finally succeeded, it was about 4 days + 5 hours (2 1/2 days up). I later decided I wanted to do it as a day hike, and logistically the easiest way would be as part of a loop. I also designed a route down Trail Canyon, which I soon discovered looked like a roadrunner head, so I called it The Roadrunner Route. Not wanting to do bottom to top *two* more times, I decided to combine them: Day hike up, multi day hike down. This trip was to fulfill those two dreams. In the end I botched the ending, severely damaging the roadrunner's beak, but since my error made the hike harder, not easier, I decided to consider both dreams fulfilled.
https://caltopo.com/m/00B2
I arrived in the park Thursday morning, April 22. Where possible, I like to begin these adventures by Surveying the Arena, which, of course, is best done from Dante's, where I can see most of the route. It was a bit hazy, so the view was not at its best. From there, it was down to West Side Road and the intersection with Trail Canyon Road. I dropped a cache of water under the tree near the southwest corner. Normally, I consider caching to be cheating, but since I was soon to be caching an entire camp site, that rule went out the window for this hike. A key event would occur 3 days later at that same tree.
From there, it was on to Furnace Creek, then the Devil's Cornfield, and around to Mahogany Flat. It was good I got there a little after noon, because there was only one site left, where I set up my stuff and relaxed a while, trying to get a little sleep, and that's what I got: a little sleep. I left my stuff to one side of the site so that if others got there later and wanted to use it, it could be done. I left around 2:30-3PM and drove to Aguereberry Point for a second round of Surveying the Arena. From there, I could see the ridge I planned to tackle down from the Wildrose Trail.
A leisurely trip back around to the valley brought me to the Devil's Golf Course for some pre-game relaxation and preparation of my pack, which mostly had water, sports drink, food, and warm clothes for higher elevation. Then, on to Badwater, where I arrived a little before 7PM. The original plan was to start at 9:01PM (12:01AM Eastern), but it seemed pointless to wait around another hour when I was as ready as I would ever be. So, I headed out into Badwater Basin at 8:03PM under a darkening sky. What was left of sunlight was gradually replaced by moonlight, and I headed straight across the valley toward Telescope.
The valley sure could use a good flooding. It is very brown, and rough, and requires a lot of stepping up and over polygonal boundarys. On the up side, there was very little mud as I got closer the west side. I took a slightly too far southward trajectory, and had to come back north a 1/4 mile or so to get back on course, and find the path through the Devil's Golf Course. In the moonlight, I could see the target tree, that has a nice gap from the rest of the vegetation, making it easy to get through and meet up with West Side Road. It's about 1/4 mile north to Hanaupah Canyon Road, which I reached at 10:38PM. Still all was going as planned.
Heading up the road, I kept seeing what looked like sparks from a campfire going up. It soon seemed clear this was some sort of optical illusion, because I never saw a fire, and I could see them in various directions. I did see one vehicle parked on the side of the road. I reached the top of the fan roughly 1AM, and dropped down into the wash where I took a break. My target was to leave the spring by 7AM, and everything was still going well. Around 4AM, I reached the 90 degree bend in the south fork, leaving me about 1 mile from the spring. By this time, there was little moonlight left, and there would soon be none. I got my headlamp out and continued slowly, taking several breaks and probably 2 power naps. As the sky started to brighten at 5-something AM, I continued at a more normal pace, reaching the spring at roughly sunrise.
Water did not flow as far down canyon as it has in years past. Also, there was a sign back a few miles warning against possible safety issues of drinking the water due to "illegal activity". But I drank at least 2 gallons of this water 3 years ago, when the same activity had already been occurring, and suffered no ill effects, so I filtered as before, and had no issues. I had about a gallon and a half when I started heading up the ridge at 6:16AM.
Carrying a lot less weight than the previous 2 ascents, I reached the top at 7:52AM, about 5150 ft, well ahead of my targeted 9AM.The steepest part of the ridge is early on, so you get above the canyon floor quickly. Along the way, I could see down into the upper spring area and saw what looked like white bags, which I took to mean possible further drug activity. After getting home, I talked to the park service and they said those are large trash bags that will eventually be flown out.
A little further along, I started finding it harder to keep the same pace. It felt like I was going very slowly, so I was surprised to see how little time had gone by when I got up on the ridge.
After turning left on the ridge, it isn't nearly as steep as achieving the ridge, but still plenty steep. There is some downhill also--probably a few hundred feet total. The course zigzags a bit, but is easy to follow, and there is frequent use trail. I reached the place I had camped the first time I went up this way, at 7450ft, just before noon. This was longer than I expected, but still on target for my time.
The flat area didn't last long, and I was soon going up the steepest slope of the hike, full of loose talus, loose soil, loose pine cones, leading to a lot of "2 steps forward, one step back". The combination of the terrain, sleeplessness, and fatigue meant it took me about an hour and a half to get up to 8100 ft. From there the footing was much better, though still very steep. It took another 2 1/2 hours to reach the trail at about 9900 ft, at 4:10PM. I dropped everything except some water, a hat, gloves, and my camera and summitted via the trail at 5:43PM, after 21 hours and 40 minutes since leaving the Badwater parking lot. It got dark while heading down from the Arcane Meadow, but the moonlight was sufficient to make it all the way without a headlamp, though I went slowly under trees where it was harder to see.
I arrived at Mahogany Flat after about 25 hours total, and it was again crowded, but I found my campsite undisturbed. I slept very well that night! Knowing I had 3 days to go roughly the distance I had just come in 1 (and almost all of that distance was down) allowed me to "sleep in" very slightly. Still, I was ready to go by 8:15AM. I saw quite a few hikers going up the road toward the trail, so it felt a little strange to go the opposite direction down the ridge. It took about 2 1/2 hours to reach the Wildrose Trail. This was now the heaviest weight I was to carry, and I took it slowly. Including rest time, it was another 1 1/2 hours to reach the saddle below Wildrose, which is where Diggonet says to start descending.
It seemed there would be a lot of side stepping to get to where the ridge is well defined. It is a ripply slope up high. I started to go down, but thought better of it and decided to take the trail farther up to where I could descend without a lot of lateral movement. This was the part of the hike of which I had the most trepidation. I confess it had been a temptation to hitch a ride from Mahogany Flat and do something else with the remaining time. But, fortunately, I squashed those thoughts.
I reached about 8450 ft about 12:49PM to start the big descent. I was constantly checking and double-checking that I was where I should be. Footing was not stable, so the trekking poles were absolutely essential to staying vertical. Even then, there were a few slips, one of which snapped one of my poles (the folding kind) so that it would not stay together. Amazingly, it was still useful when downward pressure kept it together.
There were also some areas where I took my pack off, sat down and slid for short stretches. When I looked back up the ridge, I was very glad I didn't have to go back up! At about 7600 ft, the ridge converges to one well-defined narrow ridge. There are frequently rocks and trees to get around, but nothing too difficult, aside from how steep it is. It was very slow going, taking me about 3 1/2 hours to get down to the road at 6200 ft, which I reached about 4:20PM.
I dropped my pack and headed down the road to the Morning Glory Mine. There isn't a lot to see up there, though I understand from Diggonet that there is more to see if you follow the canyon floor and narrows. There is a metal building, some cart track, a large metal bucket, some cable, some pipes, and odds and ends. After spending a little time exploring, I headed back up to the ridge to continue the road. There was a strange disconnect where I had to slide down a steep hill to a separate section of road to continue. Fortunately, that wasn't very long.
The road itself is very rough, with lots of overgrown vegetation and rocks, but the views are excellent all around. When you reach the wash, it is usually hard to discern a road, though there are always multiple paths through. A protruding ridge on the right signals that the camp is near, and as soon as I rounded it, I could see see the camp, which was definitely a welcome sight after the tiring descent. Not only that, it was very close, so the day was almost done.
It was windy at times, with a wind advisory in effect for the next day, so I expected the wind to get worse. I put my stuff at the door of the cabin such that it could not blow away, and set up my bed a few feet away. The bed frame that used to be inside is gone. It may be what is leaning against the outside left wall.
This night was a waxing gibbous moon, which had the net effect of giving brightness at both ends of the sky as the moon went down and the sun was about to come up.
I had thought of other things to do the next day, to hike out late in the day and camp on the fan, but the high wind in the forecast and the fatigue of the last 2 days, made me decide to just hike out. It took about 5 hours to go the 12 miles from the camp to West Side Road, where my cache of water was. I filtered 3 quarts from the spring, drank one, and took the other two and one last quart of sports drink. It was not a hot day, with a Furnace Creek high of 86. It started to get windy as I got near the bottom. When I reached the tree, a decision I had made early in the hike was fulfilled.
At 12:18PM PDT, Sunday, April 25, 2021, I took my backpack off under the tree where my cache was, and officially retired from long distance heavyweight backpacking. The fun-to-drudgery ratio was just way too low. On future trips, I will focus on day hikes, overnights, and perhaps something like Panamint City, where I can hike in a fairly short distance and do multiple things from the same base camp over a few days. This means my dream of Butte Valley to Harrisburg Flats isn't going to happen. I may not ever do Panamint Pass to 10460, and I'm OK with that. I made a short video to mark the occasion, though the wind was unkind to the audio.
I set out to cross the valley with water, electronic devices, and my intact trekking pole. Everything was great the first 2-3 miles. The course I had laid out using satellite images was perfect. There were water channels which made the terrain quite good with only a few very slightly muddy areas. But then, I ran into my colossal error on this trip. When I copied my landmarks to my GPS, I didn't double-check that all of the points made it. Some key points did not, but at first this seemed like no big deal, as I knew the path was mostly south and slightly east. A key point occurred when I had rough, brown terrain to the left and right, and smoother white terrain straight ahead. If I had taken the path on the right, I would have been through it fairly quickly, but I took the smoother path, and it led straight into the Devil's Golf Course.
This was not the least bit fun and only got worse. The salty, hardened mud hills are bigger, with more and sharper salt. It was difficult to strike the right balance between going slow enough to be sure I didn't fall, and fast enough to get through it in a reasonable time. Fortunately, there were no falls, but I did get a little off balance a couple of times and instinctively reached out with my left hand, which got about 6 or 7 very minor cuts. At one point the back of my leg, below the calf, scraped against some salt and I got two small cuts through my jeans.
Eventually, I decided to look for the quickest path out of it in whatever direction that was still moving closer to the east. That ended up being northeast and I finally exited a little north of Natural Bridge road. This left about 4 miles to walk on the road to my vehicle. This would normally have been a piece of cake, but I was walking directly into a 35mph wind. A guy on a motorcycle stopped and offered me a lift with about 2 miles to go, but of course, that would have been cheating, so I thanked him and he rode on. I got back to my car about 7pm, making this a 71 hour hike.
I had no desire to camp in that wind, so after heading back to Trail Canyon Road to retrieve my pack, I drove out to Pahrump to a hotel for the night. The next morning, I saw fresh snow up in the Spring Mountains. It seems it likes to snow in this area around April 25, this being the 3rd time in my personal experience.
I stopped by China Ranch for a date shake and 10 lbs of dates to bring home. Then I drove back in to the park for a very leisurely day, via the paved route from the south, making my way up to Stovepipe Wells, where I had lunch with take out from the saloon. I also drove back up Emigrant Canyon Road, where I got a little bit of rain, making this my 8th out of the last 12 trips to the park that involved precipitation. The only "hiking" I did this day was the little hills near the dunes, from which I looked out on the dunes and the Devil's Cornfield.
Then, it was out toward Beatty, where, just before I left the park I saw my first DVNP rainbow. The rain there was still waiting along US 95 south of Beatty, and I got dumped on briefly, but it was otherwise smooth sailing back to Las Vegas to return my rental vehicle and fly home.
In the end, I successfully completed the harder version of the Roadrunner Route, and my original 3 day round trip from Badwater to Telescope. It wasn't particularly fun, but I have found that it is much better to love what you did, than to love what you're doing. You're only doing it for a brief time, but the memories last much longer.
https://caltopo.com/m/00B2
I arrived in the park Thursday morning, April 22. Where possible, I like to begin these adventures by Surveying the Arena, which, of course, is best done from Dante's, where I can see most of the route. It was a bit hazy, so the view was not at its best. From there, it was down to West Side Road and the intersection with Trail Canyon Road. I dropped a cache of water under the tree near the southwest corner. Normally, I consider caching to be cheating, but since I was soon to be caching an entire camp site, that rule went out the window for this hike. A key event would occur 3 days later at that same tree.
From there, it was on to Furnace Creek, then the Devil's Cornfield, and around to Mahogany Flat. It was good I got there a little after noon, because there was only one site left, where I set up my stuff and relaxed a while, trying to get a little sleep, and that's what I got: a little sleep. I left my stuff to one side of the site so that if others got there later and wanted to use it, it could be done. I left around 2:30-3PM and drove to Aguereberry Point for a second round of Surveying the Arena. From there, I could see the ridge I planned to tackle down from the Wildrose Trail.
A leisurely trip back around to the valley brought me to the Devil's Golf Course for some pre-game relaxation and preparation of my pack, which mostly had water, sports drink, food, and warm clothes for higher elevation. Then, on to Badwater, where I arrived a little before 7PM. The original plan was to start at 9:01PM (12:01AM Eastern), but it seemed pointless to wait around another hour when I was as ready as I would ever be. So, I headed out into Badwater Basin at 8:03PM under a darkening sky. What was left of sunlight was gradually replaced by moonlight, and I headed straight across the valley toward Telescope.
The valley sure could use a good flooding. It is very brown, and rough, and requires a lot of stepping up and over polygonal boundarys. On the up side, there was very little mud as I got closer the west side. I took a slightly too far southward trajectory, and had to come back north a 1/4 mile or so to get back on course, and find the path through the Devil's Golf Course. In the moonlight, I could see the target tree, that has a nice gap from the rest of the vegetation, making it easy to get through and meet up with West Side Road. It's about 1/4 mile north to Hanaupah Canyon Road, which I reached at 10:38PM. Still all was going as planned.
Heading up the road, I kept seeing what looked like sparks from a campfire going up. It soon seemed clear this was some sort of optical illusion, because I never saw a fire, and I could see them in various directions. I did see one vehicle parked on the side of the road. I reached the top of the fan roughly 1AM, and dropped down into the wash where I took a break. My target was to leave the spring by 7AM, and everything was still going well. Around 4AM, I reached the 90 degree bend in the south fork, leaving me about 1 mile from the spring. By this time, there was little moonlight left, and there would soon be none. I got my headlamp out and continued slowly, taking several breaks and probably 2 power naps. As the sky started to brighten at 5-something AM, I continued at a more normal pace, reaching the spring at roughly sunrise.
Water did not flow as far down canyon as it has in years past. Also, there was a sign back a few miles warning against possible safety issues of drinking the water due to "illegal activity". But I drank at least 2 gallons of this water 3 years ago, when the same activity had already been occurring, and suffered no ill effects, so I filtered as before, and had no issues. I had about a gallon and a half when I started heading up the ridge at 6:16AM.
Carrying a lot less weight than the previous 2 ascents, I reached the top at 7:52AM, about 5150 ft, well ahead of my targeted 9AM.The steepest part of the ridge is early on, so you get above the canyon floor quickly. Along the way, I could see down into the upper spring area and saw what looked like white bags, which I took to mean possible further drug activity. After getting home, I talked to the park service and they said those are large trash bags that will eventually be flown out.
A little further along, I started finding it harder to keep the same pace. It felt like I was going very slowly, so I was surprised to see how little time had gone by when I got up on the ridge.
After turning left on the ridge, it isn't nearly as steep as achieving the ridge, but still plenty steep. There is some downhill also--probably a few hundred feet total. The course zigzags a bit, but is easy to follow, and there is frequent use trail. I reached the place I had camped the first time I went up this way, at 7450ft, just before noon. This was longer than I expected, but still on target for my time.
The flat area didn't last long, and I was soon going up the steepest slope of the hike, full of loose talus, loose soil, loose pine cones, leading to a lot of "2 steps forward, one step back". The combination of the terrain, sleeplessness, and fatigue meant it took me about an hour and a half to get up to 8100 ft. From there the footing was much better, though still very steep. It took another 2 1/2 hours to reach the trail at about 9900 ft, at 4:10PM. I dropped everything except some water, a hat, gloves, and my camera and summitted via the trail at 5:43PM, after 21 hours and 40 minutes since leaving the Badwater parking lot. It got dark while heading down from the Arcane Meadow, but the moonlight was sufficient to make it all the way without a headlamp, though I went slowly under trees where it was harder to see.
I arrived at Mahogany Flat after about 25 hours total, and it was again crowded, but I found my campsite undisturbed. I slept very well that night! Knowing I had 3 days to go roughly the distance I had just come in 1 (and almost all of that distance was down) allowed me to "sleep in" very slightly. Still, I was ready to go by 8:15AM. I saw quite a few hikers going up the road toward the trail, so it felt a little strange to go the opposite direction down the ridge. It took about 2 1/2 hours to reach the Wildrose Trail. This was now the heaviest weight I was to carry, and I took it slowly. Including rest time, it was another 1 1/2 hours to reach the saddle below Wildrose, which is where Diggonet says to start descending.
It seemed there would be a lot of side stepping to get to where the ridge is well defined. It is a ripply slope up high. I started to go down, but thought better of it and decided to take the trail farther up to where I could descend without a lot of lateral movement. This was the part of the hike of which I had the most trepidation. I confess it had been a temptation to hitch a ride from Mahogany Flat and do something else with the remaining time. But, fortunately, I squashed those thoughts.
I reached about 8450 ft about 12:49PM to start the big descent. I was constantly checking and double-checking that I was where I should be. Footing was not stable, so the trekking poles were absolutely essential to staying vertical. Even then, there were a few slips, one of which snapped one of my poles (the folding kind) so that it would not stay together. Amazingly, it was still useful when downward pressure kept it together.
There were also some areas where I took my pack off, sat down and slid for short stretches. When I looked back up the ridge, I was very glad I didn't have to go back up! At about 7600 ft, the ridge converges to one well-defined narrow ridge. There are frequently rocks and trees to get around, but nothing too difficult, aside from how steep it is. It was very slow going, taking me about 3 1/2 hours to get down to the road at 6200 ft, which I reached about 4:20PM.
I dropped my pack and headed down the road to the Morning Glory Mine. There isn't a lot to see up there, though I understand from Diggonet that there is more to see if you follow the canyon floor and narrows. There is a metal building, some cart track, a large metal bucket, some cable, some pipes, and odds and ends. After spending a little time exploring, I headed back up to the ridge to continue the road. There was a strange disconnect where I had to slide down a steep hill to a separate section of road to continue. Fortunately, that wasn't very long.
The road itself is very rough, with lots of overgrown vegetation and rocks, but the views are excellent all around. When you reach the wash, it is usually hard to discern a road, though there are always multiple paths through. A protruding ridge on the right signals that the camp is near, and as soon as I rounded it, I could see see the camp, which was definitely a welcome sight after the tiring descent. Not only that, it was very close, so the day was almost done.
It was windy at times, with a wind advisory in effect for the next day, so I expected the wind to get worse. I put my stuff at the door of the cabin such that it could not blow away, and set up my bed a few feet away. The bed frame that used to be inside is gone. It may be what is leaning against the outside left wall.
This night was a waxing gibbous moon, which had the net effect of giving brightness at both ends of the sky as the moon went down and the sun was about to come up.
I had thought of other things to do the next day, to hike out late in the day and camp on the fan, but the high wind in the forecast and the fatigue of the last 2 days, made me decide to just hike out. It took about 5 hours to go the 12 miles from the camp to West Side Road, where my cache of water was. I filtered 3 quarts from the spring, drank one, and took the other two and one last quart of sports drink. It was not a hot day, with a Furnace Creek high of 86. It started to get windy as I got near the bottom. When I reached the tree, a decision I had made early in the hike was fulfilled.
At 12:18PM PDT, Sunday, April 25, 2021, I took my backpack off under the tree where my cache was, and officially retired from long distance heavyweight backpacking. The fun-to-drudgery ratio was just way too low. On future trips, I will focus on day hikes, overnights, and perhaps something like Panamint City, where I can hike in a fairly short distance and do multiple things from the same base camp over a few days. This means my dream of Butte Valley to Harrisburg Flats isn't going to happen. I may not ever do Panamint Pass to 10460, and I'm OK with that. I made a short video to mark the occasion, though the wind was unkind to the audio.
I set out to cross the valley with water, electronic devices, and my intact trekking pole. Everything was great the first 2-3 miles. The course I had laid out using satellite images was perfect. There were water channels which made the terrain quite good with only a few very slightly muddy areas. But then, I ran into my colossal error on this trip. When I copied my landmarks to my GPS, I didn't double-check that all of the points made it. Some key points did not, but at first this seemed like no big deal, as I knew the path was mostly south and slightly east. A key point occurred when I had rough, brown terrain to the left and right, and smoother white terrain straight ahead. If I had taken the path on the right, I would have been through it fairly quickly, but I took the smoother path, and it led straight into the Devil's Golf Course.
This was not the least bit fun and only got worse. The salty, hardened mud hills are bigger, with more and sharper salt. It was difficult to strike the right balance between going slow enough to be sure I didn't fall, and fast enough to get through it in a reasonable time. Fortunately, there were no falls, but I did get a little off balance a couple of times and instinctively reached out with my left hand, which got about 6 or 7 very minor cuts. At one point the back of my leg, below the calf, scraped against some salt and I got two small cuts through my jeans.
Eventually, I decided to look for the quickest path out of it in whatever direction that was still moving closer to the east. That ended up being northeast and I finally exited a little north of Natural Bridge road. This left about 4 miles to walk on the road to my vehicle. This would normally have been a piece of cake, but I was walking directly into a 35mph wind. A guy on a motorcycle stopped and offered me a lift with about 2 miles to go, but of course, that would have been cheating, so I thanked him and he rode on. I got back to my car about 7pm, making this a 71 hour hike.
I had no desire to camp in that wind, so after heading back to Trail Canyon Road to retrieve my pack, I drove out to Pahrump to a hotel for the night. The next morning, I saw fresh snow up in the Spring Mountains. It seems it likes to snow in this area around April 25, this being the 3rd time in my personal experience.
I stopped by China Ranch for a date shake and 10 lbs of dates to bring home. Then I drove back in to the park for a very leisurely day, via the paved route from the south, making my way up to Stovepipe Wells, where I had lunch with take out from the saloon. I also drove back up Emigrant Canyon Road, where I got a little bit of rain, making this my 8th out of the last 12 trips to the park that involved precipitation. The only "hiking" I did this day was the little hills near the dunes, from which I looked out on the dunes and the Devil's Cornfield.
Then, it was out toward Beatty, where, just before I left the park I saw my first DVNP rainbow. The rain there was still waiting along US 95 south of Beatty, and I got dumped on briefly, but it was otherwise smooth sailing back to Las Vegas to return my rental vehicle and fly home.
In the end, I successfully completed the harder version of the Roadrunner Route, and my original 3 day round trip from Badwater to Telescope. It wasn't particularly fun, but I have found that it is much better to love what you did, than to love what you're doing. You're only doing it for a brief time, but the memories last much longer.
