The last quarter of 2025 has not been kind to Death Valley National Park. Major flooding occurred on September 19th, wiping out many roads that'd only recently reopened after hurricane Hillary went through in 2023. The September rains couldn't have happened at a worse time. The NPS - already historically underfunded in my opinion - had been gutted by asinine firings and government cutbacks. Budgets for managing and maintaining our National Treasures had been reduced dramatically. This resulted in cleanups that took longer than ever, a situation that was further exacerbated by a government shutdown - over the availability of…
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All the trips - because every trip is an adventure!
Six months earlier, I'd built our very last, late spring trip to Death Valley - with temperatures already climbing into the unbearably hot range for us Pacific Northwesterners - around Greenwater Valley, for a single purpose: to find an unusual rabbit petroglyph that I'd uncovered on the internet. We never found it. That meant that somewhere out there, a rabbit was hiding in plain sight, and while it had eluded us on our last search, we weren't going to be outsmarted a second time by some wascally wabbit! Trailhead-to-trailhead taxi. With only 90 minutes until sunset, we arrived at the…
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Having averaged our usual 1mph - which includes all the time we're stopped for me to take photos and stumble around underground - on our hike in Buckwheat Wash, we had a few hours of daylight remaining when we got back to the Tacoma. That'd be enough to get us to the starting point for our next hike - and hopefully to get dinner made - just before the sun set for the evening. I'd planned to take pavement nearly to the trailhead in the southern end of Death Valley, but when we passed Furnace Creek Wash Rd - which…
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Last spring, on our final trip to Death Valley - and our first time exploring the Backside of the Black Mountains - I mentioned that after every visit to my favorite National Park, I always seem to come away with a longer list of places to see than I had going in. Of course, it happened again. After wandering around the Black Mountains for three full days - which included driving every road in the entire area - and before I'd even posted my stories of the adventure, I knew of several more places that I would take longer to…
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The exact time we arrived in camp was irrelevant. It was dark, and it would be dark the next morning when we began our hike, so we pulled over in the parking area and set up for the night. Then, it was off to bed. A few hours later - at 4:15am, still a full three hours before sunrise - we were up again to the sound of my alarm. We had breakfast to eat, a tent to put away, and various bits of camera equipment to load up before donning our headlamps and beginning the trek up Wahweap Wash.…
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It should have been obvious based on how long it'd taken us to get to camp the previous evening, but by the time we'd checked out a couple of pictograph sites and retraced our route along the Coral Pink Sand Dunes, it was noon when we pulled into the shade of a tree for lunch, and almost 1:00pm by the time we were done making - and consuming - our tuna sandwiches. There was no way we were going to have time for an hour drive, and then a 14-mile hike through a slot canyon before the sun set just…
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Feeling vindicated after our second visit to Water Canyon and the White Domes, it was time to see some pictographs! They weren't far away - in fact, we'd already passed the trail system that would lead us to them a couple times - in our attempt to re-order elements of the trip due to weather- over the last 24 hours. Still, with only 90 minutes of daylight left - and no sense of the road conditions - there was a good chance we'd be finding camp and making the short trek to the rock art in the morning. Hell Dive…
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High-tailing it out of Water Canyon - after getting turned around by a flash flood in the narrows on our first attempt to reach the White Domes - we had about half the day remaining and found ourselves in a predicament. As usual, I'd fully overbooked our time in Utah, so if we had any hope of returning to Water Canyon the next day - when it wasn't raining - we needed to accomplish whatever I'd planned to do then, now. Or, not. We could decide to just skip something, like normal people. Now, if there's one thing that's been…
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It's rare that I'm at a loss for where to go, but in trying to figure out a plan for an early-October trip, I found myself casting around a bit. It's not that I don't have places I want to visit - in fact, I've been itching to get back to Death Valley, longing to spend more time up in British Columbia, and curious to see if I can find more Grand Canyon Polychrome out on the Esplanade. But - as I looked at these places, and trips I already have mapped out for each of them - none of…
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After a leisurely morning at the site of the Project Faultless nuclear test debacle, I had a little less than 24 hours before I needed to be back in Las Vegas for a quick alignment - I'd somehow knocked the driver front out on my first day - and my flight home. It was the perfect amount of time to allow for an afternoon of petroglyph hunting in the Pahranagat Valley region. Another underrated place in an underrated state. Now nearly a week into my trip, my first stop was in Alamo to gas up the Tacoma. I'd been able…
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In all my wanderings of Nevada, one of the highlights has been all of the military machinery that I've encountered. There's nothing like the thrill of a supersonic jet rupturing my eardrums as it thunders by a few dozen feet off the ground; or climbing up on some rusting Cold War tank, while inwardly hoping the silent bomber circling above isn’t actively lining up a practice run on the very thing you’re standing on. Those experiences generate a kind of adrenaline you don’t get from a slot machine. Still - for no reason that I can put my finger on…
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I'd delayed my hike to the top of Boundary Peak - Nevada's highest point - for 24-hours, and that turned out to be a good thing. As I turned off US-6, clouds - that had deposited rain and snow over the course of the day - still obscured the peaks along the northern end of the White Mountains. I crossed my fingers that the weather guessers were right, and that they'd clear up for the first half of the following day; if not, I was in for a rather anticlimactic summit. Still not sure this is a good idea. The…
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I figured that the next leg of my adventure would be a rather predictable one. In fact, as light faded from the sky as I drove toward through the Marietta Wild Burro Reserve, I sort of wondered what I was going to do for most of the following day. A slight rearrangement of my schedule. My destination - deep in the Excelsior Mountains - was one where I would have told you that, with near 100% certainty, I was going to find my first fully-functional, rolling ore cart. I say would have, because I'm getting about an hour ahead of…
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Morning along Pine Creek. A quarter mile from the Pine Creek Tungsten Mine, I remained fantastically horizontal for 12 hours while my body recovered from the ordeal of the previous day. As I climbed out of the tent to start my new day, I decided that perhaps I'd overdone things a smidge, and that I should take this as a rest day. Twenty minutes later, I found myself a mile down the road - enjoying a big bowl of Wheat Chex - just outside the Pine Creek Pack Station, as the thump-thump-thump of a helicopter grew louder overhead. Initially unsure…
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For the second time in as many trips, I'd been abandoned. This time, a trip to the Arizona Strip and North Rim of the Grand Canyon was on the books until life got in the way for a few buddies, and as they bowed out, so did @mrs.turbodb. This left me in a bit of a pickle, as I'd left the Tacoma in California at the end of my previous outing, and still needed to ferry it down to Las Vegas for the winter. So, it was back to the computer and a bit of time sorting through the many-lifetime's-worth…
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This is a special place to my Dad, one that he's been visiting for more than 30 years. As such, I've used names we've given to local landmarks or redacted the names of places that might be too revealing. If you recognize any of the places shown in the photos, please help to keep them special by not mentioning their names or locations. It is not often that I get to visit Dad's special little spot in the Sierra twice in one year, and I suppose that technically this year is no different, since we were foiled in our first…
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After completing the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route, we're up to nine BDRs since we started running them in 2016. Through the running of each one, @mrs.turbodb and I are - as you can imagine - regularly comparing the current BDR to the past ones. Now that I've been writing down these thoughts for the last five or so, it seems like a good tradition to continue into the future. TL;DR - The Colorado BDR - especially the northern half - is a fast BDR with plenty of varied terrain, though none of it feels all that remote, largely because Coloradans…
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After grabbing lunch in Eagle, we hopped on the freeway - a slightly embarrassing experience, given that we were aired down and travelling rather slowly - for the six-mile stint back to Gypsum and the start of Stage 5. In fact, we'd be splitting off from the main route, which follows the highway for a stretch, opting instead to run the 15-mile "Harder Alternate," rejoining the main route at the Colorado Canyon Gorge. "No Jimmy, the fish wasn't 'this big,' it was only four fingers long." Gypsum, keeping it real. Stage 5 - Gypsum to Steamboat Springs North of Gypsum…
Continue readingGypsum to Steamboat Springs and WY - Pavement and Private Land | COBDR Stage 5 and 6
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Having finally reached the summit of Mt. Antero - a place so accessible and yet not included on the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) - we were headed into Buena Vista just before 11:00am in search of something to eat. We'd learned our lesson the previous morning - having arrived in Lake City before the traditional lunch hour, opting to skip lunch, and later regretting it - and @mrs.turbodb was working the airwaves to find a good spot to stop for lunch. Half a day later - having added a highlight that every BDR adventurer should enjoy as part of…
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As we cruised down the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains, I knew it was the perfect time to take a detour. As is common on a Backcountry Discovery Route, the Colorado BDR was designed to get us from point A to point B, but not necessarily by seeing the coolest things along the way. There are many reasons for that - which I won't get into here - but in this case, just south of the stage end at Buena Vista, there was a 14,000-foot-tall peak - Mt. Antero - that I'd been trying to reach the top of…
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