March trip

[MojaveGeek]

We had 9 hiking days, a nice amount of time, based out of SPW.  On this trip, we didn't blaze many trails - every place but one we went to I'd found some info online about it.  So thanks to Kauri, John Morrow, Bob Burd (who doesn't even post here) and, I'm sure others.  I will add that I am having increasing concern about interaction between social media, etc., and environmental damage in sensitive places.   Certainly apps like Alltrails result in much more concentrated use than anything we post here, but whatever we do post, it's up there for the world to see, pretty much forever.  Yet, I have gotten so much out of sharing things with members of this community.  So I'm going to be vague in places, going forward, but if you are someone who does post and share here, I'll be happy to give you more details privately.

OK, to day 1.   Hot in the valley, so go high.  Up to Wildrose Canyon and up to Hummingbird spring.   This hike has been on the list forever, and it's a nice one.   Old road is out in the open for a while but then you get into pinyon / juniper forest and some shade and a nice trail up to the spring. 



I didn't take any pix of the spring.   It's pretty choked up with vegetation, though we did get to flowing water tied in to some pipes.   From the ridge next to the spring you get a good view as a lunch stop.   I saw Clark's Nutcrackers there which I do not recall having seen in the Panamints?   On the way down we followed the road a little ways to the old superintendent's summer house (or so I've read) which is an interesting ruin with a great view.



The next day turned out to be a bit wild.   Back up to Wildrose canyon, and we parked just a bit up from the campground.  The topology is interesting because Wildrose is mostly a NW/SE canyon, but the ones to the north (A, Nemo, Wood) are E/W.  So there is a big ridge at the foot of Wildrose.  We walked up its base on an old road (pretty marginal old road, but the burros use it and that makes a usable trail) to a mining area.  Along the way we saw pieces of the Skidoo water pipeline - I'd actually found these using satellite images.  I wanted to go there, but it is really steep - probably the only reason those pieces are still there.



The way ascended quite a bit, with views behind and to the wst.



We got up to an old mining site, with a standing cabin.



From here the plan was to go up over the ridge, down the A Canyon side a bit, and then cross back over.  I was sure I had spied a miners' trail from the cabin up to the workings up canyon, bypassing a steep gorge, on the east side.  We climbed up but could not find it, so just trudged on. This was a mistake, as we had to loop around a number of big gullies.  It would have been much easier to just go up the ramp on the other side of the canyon.  We burned a bunch of time on this, eventually coming to some more recent workings and a trashy dozer road to crest the ridge.



Then we popped over into the A Canyon side.
 


We followed the dozer road, which eventually became a clearer but still rough road, where I expected to find burro trails back over the ridge.  Well on the ground I could not see what I saw from the air, so we had to just go cross country - which was not bad, travel in that area is easy.   Along the way, we found some more sections of the pipeline.  These were 1/4 mile from where the pipe had been laid, and must have been moved to this location for some unknown reason.



So the trick from here was to find a place we could cross over the main ridge and not have crazy steep stuff to go down, like that image of the pipeline.   It was here that the slope angle shading on the topo was helpful, and we also found a good burro trail which took the sensible route.  We followed, and got back to the car a bit before dark.   Note that just where that old road starts up the canyon is an area which is closed to access, presumably to protect the Wildrose water supply, but we had no trouble walking around it.

Day 3 was cooler so we went to Pothole Canyon.  Kauri (and some canyoneering sites) document the access.  Around here  I should point out that a few weeks earlier, hiking solo in Zion, I'd had an uncontrolled slide down some slickrock and came down hard on my right knee, which is still painful a month later.   So I was not up for hikes quite as long as is my custom; we simply parked at the bend in the SPW/Cottonwood road (which was quite sandy) and walked in to the base of the falls.  This involves a long trudge of 3-4 miles across the slowly rising desert flats, but it is easy walking with views all the way.



I was getting ready to be unimpressed as we started up the canyon and it took a bend, but lo, the potholes in the big drop at the end are pretty cool, and make a Picasso-esque face from some angles.



The twisted strata in this canyon are pretty cool.  Serious canyoneers climb up the ridge to the north and drop in to the canyon a ways upstream, then rapelling down the potholes, but for us, the view from the bottom was good enough.   There had been some thought of going up the ridge a bit for more views but, nah, I was happy to be able to just hobble out  and back to the car.  Some amazing blowing sand on the way out, plumes of sand blowing over the berm in the road and up into the air.

[Bluegreen kayak]

What an apt description for the pothole face! Thank you for the great pictures.

[Kauri]

Nice photos, and thanks for sharing your trip report!!

I’ve always been interested in checking out some of the old mining cabins and sites in the Wildrose vicinity, so I especially enjoyed seeing your photos of that spot.

[netllama]

Pothole looks like fun to explore. Thanks for sharing!

[DeathValleyDazed]

Great trip report and photo essay. You always inspire me to keep exploring.

[TacoLand]

Looking sharp. I was unfamiliar with the superintendent's summer cabin, but I'm really digging the stonework. Standing cabin looks decent too. Most of the cabins I run into are barely standing. Can't wait to hear more about your trip!

[DAW89446]

I have a hunch that the pipeline section fell off the flatbed trucks that were used during dismantling and the boys decided to leave it behind.

[MojaveGeek]

I have a hunch that the pipeline section fell off the flatbed trucks that were used during dismantling and the boys decided to leave it behind.

Great theory!  But....  the pipe sections were up-canyon on a dozer road so not the way they would have been  hauled out.  There was also one section of pipe which was not the coiled and riveted construction - we'd just been discussing that, and had stopped by the piece of pipe on display on the Wildrose road, because we had been wondering  what the pressure must have been as the water pooled in the pipe enough to get over the ridge.  I don't know whether they might have used other pipe to fill gaps or make repairs on the Skidoo pipeline.

I thought it a cool find, as I've seen only one other pipe section in place out there, and in a rather improbable location (right next to a road which was not closed due to wilderness until the desert protection act).

[MojaveGeek]

OK we're up to day 4  now.

Eric had a bee in his bonnet about Striped Butte, so he rented a Farrabee jeep and we drove down there.  Farabee seems to be a pretty good organization, though it is a bit funny to be in their office and hear discussion of the Echo Canyon road (lower part) which I've done multiple times in a sedan.  Anyway...   It took 2 1/2 hours to drive down from Furnace.   Lesson: if you want to play in the Warm Springs Valley, best to make it an overnight!   There was much jeep traffic up there and a whole mob scene at the Warm Springs (?) camp where the road transitions from HC to 4WD.



Yup, it is striped all right!  Nice views from the top, though an easy cimb.



Stripes show well coming down the more gentle back side



Day 5 we went up to a very cool arch in the Cottonwoods, based entirely on beta from Kauri.  The Cottonwoods are so full of fossils!!  These ammonites (? can anyone verify) were right next to the road when we were walking along to eyeball some possible alternative descent routes.



Well some poor nav by yours truly took us a bit off route.  You have to cross a gully system and if you cross it low, as Kauri shows, it's easy, but we tried to stay high, which was tough and loose and steep until we bailed and went down lower.  The rest of the team was getting restless and talking about eating lunch at the next flat place and doing something else, when we caught first sight of the arch in cliffs high above.



Well that supplied the motivation and the rest of the climb up was straightforward.  You get up behind the arch on a big flat area.  Note there there is almost no vegetation and zero shade on this whole walk.



But the arch is big - 30 feet or so high - and we sat under it in the shade, with a totally grand view of the valley south.  This struck me as a really awesome place, and I've seen a few places out there.  I could have spent more time but it was a bit too rough to take a nap.  Super lunch spot.



On the way down I slipped at one point, and my hand ended up on this rock.  Seemed to be a theme of the day.  We ended up going back down the way we'd come up, but there is a bunch of country up there to explore, which we did a bit of.



On the drive out, the wind had picked up and the sand was blowing across the road.  It would blow across the flat, hit the berm of the road, and plume up into the air in a stream.  Visibility was pretty low but the road was pretty sandy at that point so it more or less pushed us to stay in the tracks back to the SPW airport and pavement.  This may have been our best day, by my reckoning.  That arch is pretty special, and the rocks are very interesting on the way.

[TacoLand]

I'm spoiled with sleeping in my trucks over the years ... driving out to Striped Butte and back sounds like a very long day to me. For me the biggest payoff of that area is spending a night or two out there just disappearing in a tucked away corner. Super buzz kill when you come across a mob scene of trucks. I'm afraid D.V. is so much on the established route now for wheeling that it's pretty unpleasant depending on your temperament / patience.

Incredible arch in the Cottonwoods. I've had a blast in some deep parts of that range but have experienced similar conditions: very little to no shade, same for lack of vegetation, and cranky co-hikers wondering, "where are you dragging me?" The payoffs in that area always seem to make it worth it though!