Following a Knife's Edge to Ubehebe Peak | Following Giants #6

From the edge of the Racetrack, an old mining trail climbs to the stark heights of Ubehebe Peak, across rocky slopes sparkling with heavily varnished plutonic rocks. The summit views are awesome, encompassing the Racetrack's eerie mud flats on one side, Saline Valley's deep sink on the other, and many ranges all around. You might find it more difficult to leave than to get there.

Hiking Death Valley

Depending on who's telling it, Lippincott Pass is either a treacherous, near-death experience or a straightforward shortcut between Saline and Racetrack Valley's, hardly worth a second thought.

For us, it has always been the latter, and today - headed up for our first time - it would once again be the same. Our destination - a popular pullout near the northern end of Racetrack Playa, generally used to wander it's astonishingly flat surface to the Grandstand - would serve as our access point for a climb to the summit of Ubehebe Peak.

Unlike some of our other hikes, this one was short - just under six miles with a little detour we had planned - though the trail was steep, gaining 3,000 feet of elevation over the three mile climb. Still, knowing that we'd have none of the time issues that we'd experienced on some of our longer hikes, we soaked in the sunrise over Saline Valley as we readied ourselves for the day.

Alpenglow on the Inyo Mountains, the entirety of Saline Valley seemingly ours on this beautiful morning.

A morning in camp. (a 97 minute timelapse, 1 photo every 15 seconds)

Allowing ourselves an hour-and-a-half to ascend Lippincott Pass, it was 8:30am when we finally rolled out of camp. It wasn't that we thought the 5.5 mile route would present any trouble, but we'd spotted the remnants of the Bonanza Prospect - a copper working we'd never noticed on our previous visits - and knew we'd want to poke around a bit in the warm morning sun. Plus, there would surely be photos - framed to add a sense of narrow, shelf-road drama - as we climbed the reasonably gentle grade to the trailhead.

I've always felt that the best views from Lippincott are near the valley floor.

Today, the waste pile at the Bonanza Prospect would make a fantastic camp site.

The Bonanza was a copper prospect first assessed around 1880, during the early days of the Ubehebe Mining District. It was then known as the Hessen Clipper, and it consisted of a 65-foot tunnel and a 30-foot shaft.

It became the Bonanza Prospect in 1951 when it was acquired by George Lippincott, Jr., whose father owned the nearby silver-lead mine. Subsequent surface mining obliterated the older workings and produced the 50-foot wide quarry that now dominates the site.

Forgotten riches. (Mostly malachite and azurite.)

The large number of minerals exposed here will put your rock identification skills to the test. The host rocks are marble, tactite, and skarn. Malachite, chrysocolla, and a little azurite still stain the steep quarry walls. Other minerals include silver and traces of gold, tungsten, and uranium. There are also diopside, garnet, wollastonite, idocrase, zoisite, and thulite.

Hiking Western Death Valley

After poking around the workings for a bit - the surface mining and subsequent reclamation resulting in little left to see - we continued to climb toward the sun on a Lippincott Road that seemed nearly paved.

Is it just me, or is it wider than it's ever been?

We always appreciate that this sign was left in place.

Switchbacks double as passing lanes.

I guess views from the top aren't too shabby either!

By 10:00am - somehow we'd planned exactly the right amount of time for the ascent - we reached the trailhead and set about our now familiar routine of gathering peanut butter, jelly, and the other components of a lunch we'd make while enjoying a spectacular view from higher elevations. Solar panels were deployed as a sunshade over the windshield, and all manner of electronics were secured to our selves to capture the climb.

Our destination - Ubehebe Peak (left) - and the more interesting, yet nameless subordinate peak (right) that henceforth I'll refer to as "Ubeshebe."

Unlike every other hike we'd complete on this trip, a well-defined trail - likely built by miners to haul out their ore by mule - was easily discernable over the entire length of our excursion. Beginning at the Grandstand, rocks lined a well-worn path that - after climbing gently for the first mile - led to a series of 36 steep switchbacks, and a saddle just north of Ubeshebe.

I've always ventured out onto the playa to photograph the Grandstand, but I think I've been going the wrong direction!

Climbing gently across the alluvial fan.

Enjoying the view over Racetrack Valley.

Gleaming island in a golden sea.
"...a curious dry lake, almost a perfect oval in shape, and resembling a racetrack. The illusion is heightened by the fact that an extraordinary rock formation near it appears to be a grandstand for spectators." -Phil Townsend Hanna, 1930

Even having begun our morning in Saline Valley, we were unprepared for the views as we crested the saddle after the final switchback. There - more than half a mile lower the valley behind us - Saline Valley stretched out before us, the salt lake in the distance, dwarfed by the two-mile high wall of the Inyo Mountains, even their peaks not high enough to block the snow capped Sierra, beyond.

Layers of stone and sky.

While the switchbacks made the climb up the east side of the ridge bearable, we were both hungry by the time we reached the top. Knowing we still had a lot of up before reaching the summit, we decided instead to go down - to the workings of the Copper Queen No. 1 - in search of a spot to enjoy lunch, and - we hoped - to find some brilliant blue ore.

As the trail rounded a ripple along the western slopes of Ubeshebe, a small adit and large waste rock pile caught our eye.

Jackpot!

Descending first to the short adit, the colors we found were unbelievable. Having excavated no further than 15 feet into the side of the mountain, the entirety of what was extracted seemed to be a combination of the most brilliant greens and blues we've seen.

@mrs.turbodb especially was in geology-nerd heaven.

The Hunter Mountain Pluton

The geology of Ubehebe Peak is dominated by a mid-size batholith of quartz monzonite that crystallized in the Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous. Picture a huge bubble of hot magma slowly forcing its way up through the Earth's crust, shoving aside whatever formations happen to be in the way.

Intrusion.

The contact between the magma and the native rocks produced what is called a contact metamorphic zone, a region tens to hundreds of feet thick where rocks on both sides are metamorphosed - the native rocks from being heated and crystallized, the intrusive rocks from being cooled, and both from exchanging chemical constituents. Shales were transformed into hornfels, dolomite into marble and tactite, quartz monzonite into granite, diorite, gabbro, or syenite. Later on, rising metal-bearing solutions preferentially soaked up the weakened metamorphosed native rocks, slowly turning them into rich lodes.

Today, uplifting and erosion have exposed the pluton all over the southern Racetrack region. Ubehebe Peak, the mountain facing it across the playa, the north face of the Nelson Range, and Hunter Mountain are all made mostly of quartz monzonite from this same batholith, now known as the Hunter Mountain Pluton. Here and there, islands of the original sedimentary rocks are also exposed, and on their edges are the metal-rich contact zones that sparked the Ubehebe mining rush in the early 1900s. When miners searched for metals, unbeknownst to them, they were identifying contact metamorphic zones. On modern geology maps, their mines magically retrace the shattered outlines of the Mesozoic pluton.

Hiking Death Valley

Still in awe of the relatively small pile of colorful ore we'd found at the adit, I was immediately on the hunt for the old miner trail that would deliver us to the much larger waste pile further up the hillside. This, I figured, would be a good spot to eat lunch, and perhaps offer an even larger adit that we could wander our way through, in search of the ever-elusive ore carts.

Alas, on reaching the workings, the adit was a ladderless, 50-foot deep, vertical shaft, but if we'd been amazed by the copper lode below, we were quickly distracted by the situation we found here.

Incredible.

So much left behind.

Prior to this, the Copper World Mine - in the Clark Mountains of the Mojave Preserve - was the greenest ground we'd encountered. Not. Any. More. How the miners could leave so much - seemingly copper-rich - ore was all we could talk about as we spread PB&J over four slices of bread, before greedily stuffing our face with the gooey goodness.

Million dollar lunch view.

Our bellies no longer complaining loudly, we retraced our steps for half a mile to the regain the trail that would deliver us to the peak. Here, we dropped a few of our supplies and pushed upward along the western flank of Ubeshebe, views of Saline Valley getting better and better with every switchback and rock stair we encountered.

Local riff-raff. (side-blotched lizard)

Golden folds of the Last Chance Range contrasted fantastically with the dark face of the Inyo.

For much of the hike our views of Racetrack Valley to the east were obscured by Ubeshebe, but a break in the ridge provided a peak at the Grandstand below.

Wandering a lunar landscape.

It was here - just under the summit of Ubeshebe - that we got our first look at the final ascent of Ubehebe Peak. "I don't even see a route up that ridge," I confided in my companion, the saddle between the two - not to mention the 500-foot climb - so knife-like as to seem unclimbable.

"I think I'm good here," she replied. "Yep. That's a nope for me."

Not knowing if I'd be able to make it, but knowing that I'd kick myself if I didn't check it out more closely, I slowly worked my way down to the saddle, before carefully skirting the razor edge as I began to climb.

Somehow, I continued to find the route as I ascended Ubehebe Peak, Ubeshebe gleaming behind - and below - me.

I know that girl!

I originally thought that these inclusions were once spherical, pressure and time having stretched them into thin bands, but more likely, this is igneous porphyry in a style I've not seen before.

Colorful coverings.

"I hereby claim this impossible to reach place for my mine." -some crazy dude in the early 1900s

Miraculously, the route that'd been completely unidentifiable from Ubeshebe turned out to be reasonably easy to follow - for someone comfortable with more than a bit of exposure - all the way to the summit. There, as usual, the rewards made it well worth the effort. There, I was confronted with two very different worlds. On one side, the pristine Racetrack playa and a now-tiny island of dark rounded rocks.

East.

On the other, a nearly mile-deep plunge into the depths of Saline Valley, the salt lake and sand dunes gleaming in the distance.

West.

All around, mountains. The Nelson Range to the south, Inyo Mountains to the west, Cottonwoods to the east, and the Saline and Last Chance Ranges to the north.

Infinite views.

After soaking in my surroundings for a few minutes, I set about my search for the summit log. This turned out to be a longer process than I expected. With no cairn marking the summit and the well-camouflaged ammo box well hidden in the shadow of a large stone, I nearly concluded that someone had absconded with the log as a souvenir, before finally stumbling upon it as I was about to radio my companion that I was on my way back to her position.

Made it!

Nice artwork on the ammo box. (left) | A PNW vibe on the cover of the summit log seemed like a bit of wishful thinking.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to see that the summit log was placed in March 2024, the previous log carried back down the mountain, now - hopefully - stored in the Cow Creek museum. But then I discovered an entry from the park superintendent himself, only a couple months earlier!

Last climbed this peak in Sept, 2002. It's a good day to have a great day!
-Mike Reynolds, DVNP Superintendent

I had fun being the first to note the naming of Ubeshebe - a nickname suggested in previous summit logs - for future visitors.

It was only a few minutes after 2:00pm when I plunged off the summit and began to make my way back toward the boulder on which I'd left @mrs.turbodb. From there, we enjoyed an uneventful descent down 36 switchbacks, spilling out next to the Racetrack Playa, the return trip consuming a mere 75 minutes, and much more pleasant on the now-shady-side of the mountain we'd climbed.

Headed back to pick up my "she" - at Ubeshebe - on the way down.

And with that, it was time to find our final camp site of the trip. High in the Cottonwoods, we had no idea that it would lead to an unexpected addition to our already-packed agenda.

 

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