Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

This last week has been pretty chill.  Laying back in the south end of the park, away from the traffic and from the Tourons.  And saving myself loads of money on diesel by sitting mostly idle for a bit. 

In my never ending search for ancient trails and habitation sites, I found myself going over the satellite imagery of a set of gravel benches that hold Ash Benchmark and sit just north of the opening of Buckwheat Wash, north of Saratoga Spring.  I didn't expect much and wasn't disappointed.  Lol.  I did however find some anomalies out there that dated later that I decided to check out.

Unfortunately my first attempt at accessing them was a muddy failure. I had been down both Saratoga Spring Rd where it crosses the Amargosa drainage and the Amargosa crossing on Harry Wade Rd.  There was a small amount of water still at the HW crossing but the SS crossing was dry as a bone.  So I took a stab at crossing about halfway btw the two.  Nope.  About a mile out I started to hit muddy channels and some running water.  I jumped two of them before realizing I was just getting myself deeper into trouble.  The mud out here will put you on your butt in an instant when it's shallow.  I luckily didn't find myself mired in the deeper stuff before I gave up.

So the next day I decided to go in the long way, hiking in from the East side of Amargosa off HW Rd.  This made it about a 12mi round trip instead of the 5mi round trip with the failed river crossing.  I hadn't even planned for it the night before.  I just woke up needing a long ass walk in the desert.  One with no route finding, no dryfalls & tricky bypasses, no huge elevation gains.  Just a long hot walk in the desert.

The satellite imagery on Google has been horrible for the past couple of weeks, with terrible contrast and horrible shadows.  BUT it seems to be showing the park right after Hilary hit, with gravel over most of the roadways and water in places you don't usually see it.  Here's the little dry lake off HW:


Back to being dry now. 


Not a bad view looking back north.


Drat and Blast!  I had to bypass this dryfall.  Only probably 12ft.  Odd which parts of the bench it eats and which is doesn't… 


I was still only staring at gravel bench in front of me, so I had to keep turning around for the views. 


This gorgeous multi-colored mountain is not named on any of my maps. 


Once upon a time there was quite a lot of traffic up here on these benches.  Likely a mix of prospectors in the 50's to the 80s and tourists in the 70s-90s. 


Nice pile of rocks on Ash Benchmark.  Which I honestly didn't even know I would be hitting that day. 


These look very familiar.  I didn't realize Brice left them up here when he checked this one off. 


Some tire tracks heading south.  Looking towards Saratoga. 


You could even make out the old stamp mill (I think) at the Pogo Mine over at the mouth of Old Ibex Pass.  I didn't realize it still had anything that large standing. 


Zoomed in on the Spring. 


I finally made it to my target.  I was guessing it had been a minimal/aborted gravel mining/gathering operation based on the satellite photos. 


But it appears to be the foundation for an old stamp mill or some other kind of multiple level ore processing station.   


Ramp heading down towards the Amargosa basin. 


Cool glass.  I can't guess what it held that started with XE. 


I couldn't quite figure out what the yellow coloered stuff was.  It looked vaguely like a fake leather or vinyl with backing.  It was incredibly stiff now.  And there was a fair amount of it about. 


I must say that the welds on this are better than you usually see at these sorts of sites. 








This is one of the more odd artifacts I've found at a site like this:  I think it's an old tape measure? 







Looking towards Owl Hole.  They left a bit of lumber behind. 


This seems to be a car jack.  Possibly used to adjust some level of the mill?  And of course a ubiquitous tobacco tin. 


You're going to need this part if you want it to work. 


Part of the mill or just thrown out of the workshop & left behind?


Surprisingly intact.


Same with this.  These are usually always broken. 





This is the road on the top of the bench that leads from the mill NE to Buckwheat Wash.


The path is well used but smaller than I would have thought.  The width of the tracks is only about 4.5-5ft.  So it isn't as modern as I was thinking earlier...


Unnamed colorful peak again from the back. 


Looking up Buckwheat Wash.  If you look closely you can an old road going straight up the middle of the wash. 


Here's the satellite of where the road comes off the bench and hits the wash.  Obviously it saw a fair amount of use from almost every direction. 


Back on the West side of the mill and heading towards the Amargosa. 


A bit of trim that fell off one of the cars back in the day.  Surprisingly shiny still. 


Passed this on the way down to the river basin.  Workbench?





I thought this was a fire-ring.  But it's about 8ft deep and full of water.  Well-head?





This was the last of the satellite oddities.  A trench and some lumber in the salt pan.  Loading area? 


And with that I headed back north across the benches.  I did find one foot path on satellite.  In person I couldn't tell if it was a donkey trail or a human trail.  But it's well worn and certainly hasn't seen an burro use in a very long time if that was it's origin. 


Wandering through the heat haze I saw this up ahead.


Then I saw another.  I only stumbled across the 2 but there could be more.  I can't help but feel like these are fairly half-assed prospects.  Were they hoping the bench was solid gold 2ft down?  Or at least solid talc?  I'm just not sure would you would be hoping to find at such a shallow depth  on a gravel bench.  I know there was a plan in the 1880s to process the floor of the valley for gold dust, but costs always outweighed the booty.  And these are obviously much more recent than that. 


The hole on the second one looks almost too round to have been done by hand.  Odd. 


Gorgeous views on the walk back.


Odd rock.


I will say that this site is a bit of a mystery.  I'm assuming there was a long lost road on this side of the Amargosa that headed out south towards whatever of 127 existed back then.  I can't quite figure why you would bring ore all the way down here for processing instead of over to the mines in the Ibex Hills.
For that matter it's odd to me that there are no tailings piles.  Most of these old mill foundations are surrounded by piles of gangue left over.  The site was pretty well cleaned up of usable materials when they cut out (they even took the pipes!), but they don't usually clean up the rock. 

Here's one more oddity out in that part of the park that was too far for me to reach coming from the North like I did: