DV 2025 DVII: The Quickening

[Beardilocks]

After a rest-day stroll out on the Racetrack proper (apparently quite a lot of movement since Hilary flooded it), we headed for a forgotten and little-visited corner of Death Valley called rather boringly Sand Flat.  While only being 15 air-miles from Stovepipe Wells and a mere 6 air-miles from the Marble Canyon Trailhead, it's over 80 miles on the road to this remote corner of the park. 

Sand Flat is more accurately an old dry lakebed that sits at the base of a series of steep, unnamed peaks of the Cottonwood Mountains.  The area has seen some small amount of mining activity and was well traveled by Native Americans for millenia.

Currently it seems to quite a high population of something else entirely:  Mountain Lions.  When we arrived at our campsite (a 50ft clearing next to an old, disused mining road), we found no less than 8 huge piles of scat of varying ages sitting out in the open.  The one pictured below was about 1.25-1.5” thick and about 5-6” long.  As cats generally prefer to bury their scat and with so much here, my best guess would be that several large cats are trying to claim this part of overlapping territories.  But that's just a guess.  It most definitely kept us hypervigilant for the 2 nights we were here.


Hiking in via the main drainage into the lake from the West.


After visiting some old friends along the ancient lakeshore, we headed to the main Northern drainage into the lake that would have emptied a rather vast area of the western Cottonwood slopes into this small lake, once upon a time. 



I had guessed that maybe this was a travel route for Native Americans in the distant past and hoped they'd left some mark behind.  And I wasn't completely disappointed:  A lone petroglyph marks the corner where the wash turns up out of the lakebed, making the long hike more worth it. 

Map or man?  We'll never know.



Some small amount of lithic scatter was found up the wash, but nothing in sight showed promise as an obvious habitation site or campsite. 




Possibly a route to explore further someday, possibly hiking down from White Top Mountain Road to here. 



Heading back out into the dry lake to check out an elevated rock outcrop along the shore. 



It's such a gorgeous, enclosed spot. 





We found easily a half dozen shell casings for these ~50cal bullets today, but this is one of the very few actual projectiles I've found out here. 


Looking SSW across the lake. 





Looking back up the Northern drainage. 


We set our sites on some interesting looking hills across the lake and set out in that direction.


Just as we got within shouting distance of the hills, I found this mortero stone half buried in the wash.  Once used to crack nuts and maybe bones open (as opposed to the smoothly-bellied-out morteros used for grinding grains) this one was abandoned at some point many many centuries ago.  One has to wonder what set of circumstance led it to be dropped or left behind here.  A quick search of the surrounding area showed no further signs of habitation.


Then we found this.  There has been much debate as to whether it is man-made or natural. 


The hole itself seems to have been drilled out, prehistorically or historically.  The rest of the rock is also a very odd shape indeed. 





What this picture of the rear completely fails to capture is how a groove about the same size as the hole ran down this side of the stone to the point at the base. 


With no mines very nearby or any signs of man's influence in historical times, it is a mystery to me.  Please comment if you have ever seen anything like it!


Camp is somewhere in those hills. 


Looking back towards the north shore of the lake. 





I had left some homemade dough slowly rising in the cool of the truck all day.  So after a long day exploring we tucked into some calzones.  This time with pesto, broccoli, mushrooms, and provolone cheese.  Epically delicious.