Death Valley 2022/23

[Beardilocks]

After a week of crappy cell reception, I'm back with a few stories.  The weather has been less than awesome and my timing terrible.  Every necessary rest-day after a long hike is only decent weather day of the week lately.  Wind has been the biggest factor, with it just really being incessant the last couple of weeks.  The big weekend storm is turning out to be more blow than bite with very little rain in the southern part of the park.  Although we'll see how today ends up.  

Last week I hit Hole in the Rock Spring on a "rest day".  One of those places I've always meant to check out but somehow always falls to "next time" because I'm always rushing through the pass.  I was camping on the very pleasant and quiet BLM land on the CA/NV border this time so it was an easy choice.  

There's a VERY well worn path to the spring from near the road.  Interestingly Google lists the spring in the wrong place.  I was hoping to find some signs of human visitation, both historic and pre-historic, but was mostly disappointed.  I had seen photos of some car-era signs in the area but found nothing of the sort.  I also know that at least one burial mound was excavated in the area, but I could find no signs of any kind of habitation or visitation.



The cave is much larger than I thought it would be, going in quite a ways.  But the spring was also much drier.  This was historically a big producer and with the rain we've had this year I figured it would be flowing at least a bit.  









Beautiful Area


There were a few very large rock cairns in the area.  I couldn't see any trails going to them or any prospects in the area.  They were definitely not as prolific and were much larger than the prospecting cairns in the Confidence Wash.