Death Valley 2022/23

[Beardilocks]

A couple of days after Xmas I cruised up to Lemoigne Canyon.  I’d been down the road before but I had never hiked up to the old cabin/mine.  

It was a very cloudy/moody day with just enough wind to turn sweat into chills if you stopped moving for more than a minute.  The atmosphere fit the canyon very well.  










I was surprised to see the bright red kazoo in the wash, the splash of color was very unexpected.  I left it there for the next person to enjoy or more likely to set up in a nearby rock as everyone seems to like to do.  Or for a musically inclined kangaroo rat.  




Lemoigne’s old cabin.  Still (mostly) standing.  Aesthetics are a bit ruined by the very bright more modern cabin behind me in the shot.  But not a bad place to live and work out here.  

I’m generally not a big fan of modern cabins and/or graffiti.  But on the walls of this cabin is a really amazing history and record.  Most of the notes (it’s not entirely without bad poems, dirty words, and the typical silliness) is a detailed record of visitors.  Most interesting to me, the years of about 1972-1994.  The years between the last mining attempts here and the closure of the road after the monument became a National park and this area was designated “wilderness”.  Almost everyone gave a date, the make/model of car they used, the weather, and road conditions.  Fascinating to me see someone coming up in 1977 in a 1972 Land Rover but they had to hike the last few miles because there was 5” of snow (and they complained at length about 2wd cars ruining the road!  Lol).  Or the notation that someone made it up in a Trans Am, only to have the tantalizingly vague notation from another in the group saying “he cheated!!!”   The last inscriptions in the period included a 1992 Jeep Cherokee in 1994 staying the vehicle was in completely stock configuration and although he made it, he’d damaged it on the rough road and was planning bigger tires and a skid plate.  

All of this was highlighted by how impossible the drive would be today in anything other than dedicated rock crawling rig.  The old road is in amazingly perfect shape in fits and spurts, including some tire impressions in the gravel wash that look like someone came through last week!   But any sections in the narrows and where the dryfalls were filled in have been completely reclaimed by nature.  The contrast in the parts of the road, those that looked recently used and other sections where I couldn’t fathom a route, was highlighted nicely by the those recorded on the cabin walls in such detail.  

Shot of the valley looking stunning on my way out.