DV 2025 DVII: The Quickening

[Beardilocks]

This hike was to a landmark that I have been staring at off of North Rd in Death Valley for years.  It sits sort of behind the Grapevine Ranger's Station (now with Starlink and open bathrooms!) and is fairly accessible from Mesquite Spring Campground (now a whopping $20/night). 

Due to there being a smattering of Native American stuff in the general area, I was hopeful of finding something either on the route or at the destination.  Alas, other than some trails, I struck out on that front.  But it was still an amazing hike to a place that has likely not seen any visitors since the prospecting rush about 125 years ago. 

Looking at this oddity from the Ranger's Station.  I'm calling it the Island of Misfit Gnomes (playing off of the more famous “Gnome's Workshop” on the DV salt flats, the rest will become apparent in due course).


First view of IoMG several miles into the hike.  There are several of these large benches to cover on the way there. 


A reasonable portion of the way we got to follow these old Native American trails.  I'm calling them originally indigenous trails because, while I'm sure prospectors utilized them during the mining boom, there remains just enough evidence of prior use before that as well like scattered hunting blinds & deadfall traps. 


The first of many prospector's cairns that we would see today.  The prospectors this area built them absolutely enormous!  Some were 4-5ft tall.  Definitely among the biggest I've seen in DV.  (Prospectors built cairns to denote ridges or peaks that they had already searched for potential mineral deposits.)


The narrow ridge that just barely connects the bench to this odd feature.


A good look up the huge wash that separates Tin Mountain from the enormous ridge btw Ubehebe Crater and the terminus of the Cottonwoods.


There are at least 5 prospector's cairns in this photo.  They didn't skimp.





An absolutely massive one on the Island.  Over 5ft tall.


So, by a wild coincidence and out of my own ignorance rather than by design, this cool Island of Misfit Gnomes just happens to be another chunk of volcanic tuff found along the west edges of Death Valley itself.  I had not predicted that coming off of my explorations of the similarly volcanic tuff-based Temphora Sphinx 80 miles South in the Panamints.  But there's no denying it!

A hatchery of Misfit Gnomes. 


A good portion of this island in the sky is covered in these tiny, gnome-sized hoodoos of volcanic tuff, averaging about 6-12” tall.  Just thousands of them. 


And some of the hoodoos are in very fantastical shapes like this cow-dragon thing. 


Interestingly, there is also a very obvious sedimentary layer under/in the tuff from an ancient lakebed, just like over in the Panamints. 


Which include some very clear traces of the lake bottom frozen in time. 



A few smaller caves are scattered throughout but are mostly collapsed. 









Looking South down Death Valley. 








Seriously, there's a LOT of these little guys. 


Looking North along the ridge that ends in Ubehebe Crater.  I hiked that last year and was amazed to find that it's covered in rounded river rocks.  Scotty's Ranch is on the right in the distance.


Looking towards Grapevine Canyon.  It would have been wild to watch the flash flood that took out Scotty's Castle come down this wash carrying all the associated flotsam. 


Another massive cairn.  This one about 4.5ft tall and almost 3ft across. 





A few bits of what I call 'iron-wood' were scattered around.  It's some kind of petrified wood (that I haven't had the time to research properly) similar to some of the stuff I found near Davis Gulch in Utah. 


I found myself never really getting sick of the endless whimsy of these constant hoodoos. 





Finally back home, where I parked it, I whipped up a killer Spanish Tortilla to replace some of those lost calories. 


Overall a very interesting hike that turned out completely differently than I expected.  And another interesting note on the geology of Death Valley, one that has only added to my questions and curiosity.