DV 2025 DVII: The Quickening

[TacoLand]

Seconded ... been trying to get out to Corridor for quite some time now. This is the first I've heard of it since Hurricane Hilary wrecked shop in the Park.

Curious to hear where you camped when you were out in that zone for eight days. Shoot me a message if you'd rather keep it on the down low.

[Beardilocks]

Seconded ... been trying to get out to Corridor for quite some time now. This is the first I've heard of it since Hurricane Hilary wrecked shop in the Park.

Curious to hear where you camped when you were out in that zone for eight days. Shoot me a message if you'd rather keep it on the down low.

I tend to stay in Hidden Valley or up White Top Mountain Rd, depending on where I plan to be & what the temps are.  Lost Burro Gap can be ok in the warmer months (little to no sun) and as long as traffic is light. 

Otherwise, Homestake is your only option.  Or a small wash on Racetrack Rd. 

Hit me up if you want exact spots for your trip Taco.

[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. 

[Beardilocks]

Our next mini-adventure was to stop by a rock outcrop that I have been meaning to explore forever.  I had no idea if I would find anything, but as it was at the edge (or perhaps once even in the middle of) one of the many dry lakes out in this area, I was hopeful to come up with something.  At the very least eliminate it from future searches.  Lol. 

Looking down into Hidden Valley from the small pass between there and Ulida Flat.


Pretty much within the first 50 yards of searching I hit paydirt.  Not sure if this sheep is chewing something or… the more I look at it I think his head is sideways, showing off both horns.


A very strange alien character here.  Odd shape for how symmetrical it is. 


Anthropomorph or zoomorph?  Some kinda 'morph I think. 


Classic squiggly lines. 


Couldn't make this one out.





And just like that, that was all she wrote.  A smattering of petroglyphs in a 100ft area.  Circling the rest of the nearly 1 mile circumference of the hill would yield no more glyphs. 

But it would yield more oddities. 

Like this pristine old bottle laying on a rock.


Anyone have any ideas on age/use? 


Crappy cell photo, but for hours there was a pair of both of these circling and practicing… I originally thought refueling, but they never seemed lined up quite right or close enough for it.  Maybe escort training?  The big prop planes rumbling through the sky were a nice change from the jets screeching.  Oddly nostalgic. 


Then at the far side of the outcropping we found this. 


At first I was insanely excited to find a Native American rock alignment!  Which are oddly not all that rare in the park (with well over 100 identified according to Rondthaler), just REALLY hard to find. 


At least that's what I thought starting at the tail, which I saw first.  But the even spacing of the rocks that make up the circle had me doubting that assessment.  Most of the rock alignments that I've seen around Death Valley are a bit more loosey-goosey.  They didn't seem to have our more modern OCD about placing the stones so evenly spaced or so close together.  The compactness and the neatness of it speak more to a modern fake IMHO. 


But not THAT modern.  On close inspection, the stones are very deeply imbedded into the surface.  So they weren't placed super recently.  Also, most of the bushes there have grown on top/over rocks already placed there (rock traps wind-blown seed, bush grows under/next to rock).  Off the top of my head, I can't identify these species or their growth rates. 





So my wild guess is that alignment is 50-100yrs old at least.  With there always being a possibility that it's older.


For those curious, I neglected to get my compass out when I was there but the cross in the circle is vaguely East/West oriented, with the tail pointing east.


This artifact (sitting about 50ft away) added to the mystery.  It has been used a fire ring at some point, but it's not a truck rim, but rather a section of very heavy (1/8” steel at least) mining drum of some kind, much heavier than would have been used for transportation of liquid or materials.  Is it related to the rock alignment?  Impossible to say.

[DAW89446]

Guessing here.

Rock w/hole: implement for tilling, hoeing soil? Use stout stick/branch for handle.

Bottle: looks older, but a screw cap puts it more modern.

You sure find neat stuff!

[Brice]

I spent some time looking through this Bottle dating website.  Eventually I found this PDF file that has a list of all the bottle base markings.  Looks like that bottle is from the Hillsboro Glass Co.  (1961-1997). 1976 would be my guess. That could be the date of the rock alignment too, if they were found right next to each other.

Some of those hills/mountains in your photos are just BEGGING to be climbed. How can you deny them?!

[Beardilocks]

Yeah, the screw top threw me because otherwise the bottle was very heavy and seemed older. Cool to be intact either way.

The rock with the hole was a bit heavy for tilling. But possibly another use with a stick through the hole? Head-crusher?

Very cool resource Brice. Thanks. And I'm climbing some things. My current hiking partner is not quite as used to scaling American mountains as you are (or were Cityboy). Lol. I have the first known summit of the Sphinx at least.

When DV NPS opened West Side Rd I saw that they highlighted a "volcanic cinder split & offset by an earthquake fault line" as an attraction. Hmmmm... I wonder where that could be.

[Beardilocks]

We decided to explore around Quartz Spring on the East side of Racetrack Valley before we headed back to… well as close to civilization as we ever get.  It intrigued me for many reasons:  I know of Native American sites in virtually every direction from the spring.  You can can just see a couple portions of an old road going out there on satellite still.  The main scientific paper I could find on the area (from 1931) talked of fossiliferous rocks and the sheep population.  Surprisingly that 1931 paper was also the most recent “trip report” I could via Google, so it's rarely visited. 

On the morning we decided to head out, the wind started picking up an hour after dawn and several hours later it was still picking up.  The trudge across the valley was pretty miserable with gusts over 55mph making stumbling over the rough terrain extra difficult.  I was forced to tuck my shirt in for the first time ever, lest it get torn to shreds.  All hats had to be stowed. 

A nice section of the old road out to the spring.  Actually, we would find another old road heading North out of the canyon later. 


The sheep population can't be down too far from the 1930's.  Evidence abounded even though we never saw any live ones. 


Having made it into the mouth of the canyon, the wind hadn't abated at all, just changed direction on us.  As we were exploring a bench above the main wash my partner said simply “There's a boot in the tree”.  As English isn't her first language and things occasionally get confused in translation, I blinked for a second looking for her actual meaning.  I didn't find it.  “Come again?”  She just pointed. 

Well I'll be damned. 


That is certainly a first for me.  How in the damn hell...


After a bit more searching around I saw this upper jaw lying on the ground.  I'm reasonably certain that it's a sheep.  Maybe.  But the proximity to the boots had my heart pounding for a minute. 


Standing up after examining the jaw, I was surprised I was back staring at the boots-in-the-tree again.  I thought I had walked a little ways away, granted I was circling a bit.  What the…

It's a SECOND pair of boots in ANOTHER tree.  Now I'm really flabbergasted.


They appear to be approximately the same make/model and possibly even a similar size.  Both seemed to be of green leather, or have aged to a nice green?  Based on the fittings and the soles I'm guessing maybe 1960's?Hard to say.  Soles look like maybe Vibram's but those were invented way back in 1935.  They are quite tall on the ankle compared to modern boots. 


We continued our wanderings.  Some of the geology was very cool.  But we never identified anything particularly fossiliferous.  So Boots 2 Fossils 0 at this point in the trip.  I didn't see that upset coming.





There were signs of man around here & there.  Some older like this ancient hunting blind.


Some slightly more modern like this sardine can.


Another hunting blind.


The short wash up to the spring was a total rubble pile.  I wonder if one of the 2 storms in the last several years hit here particularly hard. 


Some of the most modern plumbing I've seen at a Death Valley spring. 


What I think is a coyote skeleton near an old steel pipe. 


An old guzzler (watering spot for wildlife) I believe. 





Old-ass box of rocks. 


Seeing that this fall behind the spring seemed to be unclimbable, we didn't investigate closer. 


A few tiny caves that needed checking out.  The one on the right was properly sheep sized (and regularly well used as such).


This one was a small prospect in the hard rock.  I bet they were cursing their luck that nothing panned out this close to a water source. 


After that we back-tracked to where the left-hand (non-spring/North) side canyon split off. 


More cool sheep evidence.


This side tightened up quickly.



The walls of this canyon were really cool layers that looked absolutely ancient. 


And on a bit of a tilt threatening vertigo. 


I felt that this ~20-25ft fall was absolutely climbable.  Up.  But I had no doubt that the down-climb would catch me out.  Pity because the canyon looked like it kept going a ways on top. 


Looking back down-canyon. 


Closer look at the fall. 


Amazing layers. 


With this wild Stargate/door/portal/arch towering over you the whole time. 





We took another side canyon that also ended in a decent dryfall (~15ft this time).  Easily bypass-able, but it looked like it cliffed-out soon after. 


 
Looking back at 5418T on the south side of the canyon mouth.


Gorgeous view back into Racetrack Valley.


On the way out we found where the old road came into the canyon.  And that it had a spur that went north, hugging the mountains. 


Another possible hunting blind. 


And another. 


The wind had mercifully died down for the walk back out.  And the view was stunning. 


Back home I made some Bean & Cheese Enchiladas w/ homemade enchilada sauce.  Which comes out super chunky when you don't have a road blender.  I need some kinda hand crank food processor.  I used to have a hand crank coffee grinder but that was a bit too much that early in the morning most days….


I left these to the end to help obfuscate where they were.  Obviously one always hopes for some killer glyphs near a spring.  These were much farther from the spring that I expected.  But similar in many ways to other petroglyph rocks near springs in Death Valley in that there is generally one boulder, a ways from the actual spring (as a marker I would imagine), and that is decorated heavily in the round.  While not always the case, I can think of 5 or 6 springs that fit this style.  Interesting. 





This design blew me away.  What seemed at first to be a wildly abstract design, settles eventually into (IMHO) a number of sheep, in the round, gathered around a spring, with possibly several hunters and/or weapons represented.  It's the first sort of circular design petroglyph I've seen in DV. 


Notice also the little guy with the claw feet on the left.  A neat tweak to the Wolfman style glyph usually with clawed hands or hands and feet.  Rarely just feet.


The backside of the boulder had a harder to decipher petroglyph that went around the corners in a few directions.  Often these spring-related glyphs have something sort of map-like on one side, possibly directing the viewer to the next water source.  But that is just speculation that I've read in papers. 


This dude made me laugh out loud!  It would seem to be a dude with a very fat belly, just around the corner from the cornucopia of sheep possibly being hunted around a spring.  A sign of how good your fortune could be here? 





Some distance away was a this small family(?) group on another boulder. 





And a bit further away were another two figures alone on the side of rock face. 


Overall a very cool adventure with way more curveballs than I could have imagined.  I had expected some human artifacts, but never could have dreamed of a boot-tree garden!  I hoped for a petroglyph or two but I think this one is in my top 5 single-boulder glyphs in the park now.  Throw in old roads, gorgeous views, several sheep skulls, and a few amazing canyon narrows… what more could you possibly ask for in a  “I wonder what could be over there?” CLASSIC Death Valley hike.  God I love this place.

[TacoLand]

Phenomenal explorations & group of posts. Sometimes I'm tempted to leave weird stuff in the backcountry just to see how long it'd take for you to stumble across it and be excited/spooked ...

[MojaveGeek]

You find such awesome stuff. I've always been interested in that general area but as you say, it is pretty remote, and I don't trust rental SUVs enough to get up there without another vehicle for company.

and I've been enjoying your food pix. SO sorry your enchilada sauce was too chunky