After a spectacular hike up King Midas Canyon, I'd planned to camp somewhere near the mouth of Monarch Wash - which I've visited the upper end of in the past - so I could hike to a mine accessible from the lower end of the drainage. However, as I was driving up the Beatty Cutoff, I started to have second thoughts.
I knew I had to be out of the park and on my way back to Las Vegas no later than 9:30am. The hike - some 6 miles roundtrip, plus the inevitable stopping for pictures - would take me at least four hours, thereby implying a start time of 5:00-5:30am. Reasonable, but for the minor detail that sunrise was at 7:02am, so I'd be doing the entire hike to the mine in the dark.
Even that might not have been terrible - I could see everything on the way back down - but I worried that hiking in the dark would be slower going, putting me behind schedule, and ultimately risking my ability to catch my flight. So, I scrapped those plans and opted to do something else entirely.
And now, you know my - completely meaningless - poorly laid, original plan.
Ultimately, I ended up turning around and heading south to find camp. That would put me closer to Las Vegas in the morning, and closer to the trailhead for a much shorter hike that I've been meaning to do for a while. Knowing I still had an early morning, I was soon sound asleep under the watchful eye of a familiar peak.
The following morning...
I have organized this story a bit differently than most.
Some of the locations have little or no reporting on the internet and I feel they should remain that way or someone I respect has personally requested that I not share them; as such, locations have been redacted and/or not mentioned, I've used non-official names for local landmarks, and the order of the trip has been randomized.
Please, if you know the locations shown here, I encourage you to enjoy them as much as I did - and follow my lead by not mentioning their names or locations in order to keep them a little less well-known, and special.
For more on my approach, you can read Do you have a GPX for that?.
Good morning, Funeral Mountains.
As had been the case the last two mornings, the rain fly was covered in dew as a result of the low temps (40°F instead of the usual low 50s °F) and unusually high humidity (73% instead of more typical mid-30s%). Hoping that the tent would dry out while I was hiking, and that it wouldn't turn into a longer-term mildew issue, I dried it off as best I could with a beach towel and closed it up. Then, after a quick drive to the trailhead, I unfurled the tent again, grabbed my hiking paraphernalia, and set off on foot.
Finally, a morning with sun! The long light on the desert pavement was looking nice.
Making my way up the alluvial fan.
The hike I had planned was to one of the four major natural springs found in the Funeral Mountains. Interesting in its own right, the tidbit that had caught my attention was the existence of a few Native American hunting blinds in the vicinity. I'm sure I've wandered by walls at one time or another that I couldn't explain, and I imagined that these might fall into the same bucket, were it not for the suggestion that they might be hunting blinds. At the very least, their location - near a water source - was certainly a good indicator that these could be, in fact, hunting blinds.
I made good time up the alluvial fan, and soon I was gazing at the conglomerate headwall from which the spring emerged. Interestingly, this headwall is the crest of a ridge, and yet - there at the top - there was a very well-defined chute. It was an indicator that this ridge may have been - at one time - the lip of a large body of water; the chute a fall, over which water escaped.
Imposing headwall.
Pushing forward, I worked my way into a small slot canyon at the base of the wall. Like the dry fall above, it seemed that this slot was carved into conglomerate that was once a plunge pool, slowly eroded over millions of years. I'd timed it just right from a lighting perspective, the dark and reflected light making for a magical experience.
Dark and light.
Wider.
And with that, I'd reached the spring. Or at least, I'd reached the sealed collar for the tunnels that extends a few hundred feet to the spring.
Water is a valuable resource out here. Double locked, with good reason!
Built into a low wall, there was plenty of sheep scatt around the tunnel, but there was even more leading up to the headwall. I assume, the original location of the spring. Climbing up the loose dirt, the ground here seemed perpetually damp, and there were two old rock-and-concrete guzzlers that looked to be CCC-era additions, likely installed when the main output of the spring was diverted for human use.
Gravel guzzler.
Over time, water and erosion had filled up the guzzlers, so I took a few minutes to scrape out most of the material. Boy, they were a lot deeper than I imagined, and boy oh boy did they stink. Surely a combination of the sulphur-rich water and whatever had died or pee'd in them over the years!
Slowly filling again.
At this point, I took a look at the route I'd planned, and noted that the possible site I'd marked for the hunting blinds seemed to be at the very top of the headwall. Not only did I know there was no way I was making it up there and still getting to the airport on time, but it also seemed like the wrong place for a hunting blind to exist. That is, unless the idea was to scare the sheep over the dry fall, which seemed a little... messy?
With no real choice, I decided that I should put myself in the shoes - well, I had shoes anyway - of those who came before us, and that meant following a well-worn sheep trail that led away from the spring.
This close to water, it was more like a sheep highway.
Soon enough I was out in the open, searching for piles of rocks in a desert full of them. It didn't take long to spot something interesting below.
Rocks.
Definitely not natural. These were gathered by a human hand.
Continuing to follow what seemed like the natural lay of the land, I wasn't long before I spotted another pile of rocks that was most definitely a hunting blind. I was elated!
The perfect spot for an ambush.
Shhhh, the sheep are coming.
Remnants of the past.
By now I'd been wandering around the flanks of the Funeral Mountains for a couple of hours, and it was time to get a move on back to civilization. My decision to abandon my original plans for a much shorter search - and the success I'd had as a result - had turned out both fortuitous and surely more relaxing than a six-mile sprint would have been.
Artist's Pallet was looking brilliantly colorful as I arrived back at the truck.
Having aired up the previous evening, the trip back to Las Vegas was quick and uneventful. A stop in Pahrump to wash some of the mud - a side effect of the wet terrain I'd encountered on the entire trip - and at a Maverik for some cheap-to-someone-from-the-PNW fuel, were a nice chance to stretch my legs.
Soon enough I was descending the pass from Deep Springs to Las Vegas, a couple of burgers and fries high on my list of desires.
Red Rock Canyon gleamed in the mid-morning sun.
Another great trip in the books!
The Whole Story
