I was so excited to be camped in my favorite spot in all of Death Valley National Park - with an amazing view of Striped Butte - that I was ready to go even before our alarm went off in the morning.
Knowing that I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep, I wiggled my way out of bed and down the ladder to grab my phone and a battery pack that I could use to set up a timelapse of sunrise in this special place.
Like the feeling of relief that I often get upon entering Death Valley, starting the timelapse seemed to take a weight off my mind and I climbed back into bed for another hour while the sun and clouds did their thing outside. It was a joy to slow down - if only for a bit - and savor this place that I hold so dear.
After a bit of reading and snuggling under the comforters, we eventually decided to get our day underway. We wouldn't be going far - the plan was to stick around the valley over the course of three days - so while @mrs.turbodb got breakfast squared away, I wandered around the granite boulders that we'd called home for the night.
Soon enough we were eating breakfast, each of us popping out from behind the tailgate to enjoy the view while we consumed our respective cereals. @mrs.turbodb went with Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds, like an adult. I ate Wheat Chex. For those unfamiliar, Wheat Chex are small beige rafts of compressed sadness that look exactly like the cardboard box they came in. This is fitting because nutritionally they're indistinguishable from it. I have eaten them - joyfully - for years. I will eat them tomorrow. There is no explanation.
Author's Escape
Our first - and main - hike for the day was in nearby Redlands Canyon. This is an area of the park I've always been curious about, but never visited, so it was exciting to follow the road through the northwestern reaches of the valley towards the pass that would put us on the Panamint Valley side of the range.
By 8:30am we'd reached the trailhead - or at least, the spot in the road where we planned to park and head into the wilderness on foot - and for the next few minutes we filled water bottles, attached camera gear, and smeared sunscreen on our faces. We didn't have all that far to go - maybe five miles and a total of 1,000 feet of elevation gain - but we weren't sure how easy it would be to find, much less follow, the old miners' trail we were looking for, and we've found ourselves without water enough times to know better.
The first - and I suppose, last - mile and a quarter of the hike was reasonably straightforward: walk in the wash. As we did, the walls of the canyon towered beside us, the flora changing with their orientation toward the sun. It was spring up here at 4,200 feet, and the cacti were loving it.
Eventually, keeping a close eye on our general location, I spotted the faint trail that led out of the wash. This wasn't any real feat, I suppose, except for the fact that I'd completely missed the cairn that indicated its presence.
I always love following old miners' trails. I'm not sure exactly why this is. Perhaps it is because they are so enduring despite so much time passing. Perhaps it's because my mind wanders back to the men who once labored over these routes in the hopes of striking it rich. Perhaps it's simply because I'm curious where they lead. Whatever the reason, this trail was no different, and despite the constant upward trajectory, we reveled in each switchback we found, amazed that such a wonderful trail was completely invisible from the wash below.
PETER B. KYNE'S SECRET CAMP
This camp is hidden in a majestic natural fortress. It is still an adventure to get to it today. I tried to land a helicopter there, but the mountains were too rugged for us to set down anywhere nearby. Sandy Hunt and I were in this camp once. It was really an extraordinary experience.
In the 1920s and 30s, Peter B. Kyne wrote several best-selling books: Never the Twain Shall Meet, The Enchanted Hill, The Parson of the Panamints, to name a few. His western stories were great; some were made into movies. One of my favorites was, “The Three Godfathers;” John Wayne and Ward Bond starred in it. He also wrote serialized stories for the Saturday Evening Post magazine.
I heard stories about this camp from Russell - a.k.a. "Panamint Russ" - years before we got to see it. When he first started talking to us about this place, I was not interested in chasing around the hills looking for some dumb thing that he thought was important. Like everything he talked about, there was a weird mystery that went with it. At that time, I had no idea who Peter B. Kyne was. For a long time, I thought he was telling us about some guy named Peter be kind.
After less than an hour, we'd reached the platform that was once Peter B. Kyne's hideout, and an old mine camp before that. The view from the camp was awesome. Not only were we now hundreds of feet above the wash in the canyon below, the steep dark walls of Redlands Canyon - as though they were curtains - seemed to peel back, revealing the gleaming dry lakebed of Panamint Valley.
The old mine camp turned hideout wasn't the end of our journey. Several hundred feet above the platform - on a trail much fainter than the one we'd climbed so far - were two old mine adits. In the hopes that we'd find some interesting artifacts and inscriptions, we pushed on, perhaps against the better judgment of my companion.
After a bit of poking around - there wasn't much left to see - we emerged from the second adit with smiles on our faces, ready to retrace our path back down to the canyon. Now familiar with the trail, down was significantly quicker than up, and before long we were back in the wash, admiring colorful splashes of both the plant and animal variety!
A Lone Tree
It wasn't even lunchtime when we got back to the Tacoma, but - having covered quite a few miles - we were both hungry. We could have eaten right there on the tailgate, but I knew that our next attraction wasn't too far away. It wasn't even all that hot, but - while I knew it was a long shot out here in the desert - I hoped we might find a bit of shade.
Aired down to 18psi, the tires absorbed the bumps as we pushed our way higher. The road here was in better shape than I'd expected, and we were making good time until movement caught my eye and I let off the gas. Pulling the emergency brake as I reached for the camera, I excitedly asked @mrs.turbodb if she'd seen it too. I can't recall if she had, but I wouldn't have heard her response anyway, I was already on the hunt.
Really, it was more of a "sneak" than a hunt. The warm sun meant that my quarry would have plenty of energy, and the wrong move on my part would mean a missed opportunity. I crept to within five feet, sure that each step would be the one that sent it scrambling.
It did not scramble.
I slowly raised the camera to my eye and pressed the shutter. I took another step. Then another. With each I snapped a series of shots. Eventually I was close enough to nudge its tail with my finger, which is, it turns out, what it took to convince a Long-nosed Leopard Lizard that I was there at all.
I don't know what kept this guy from running away, but the lizard, as far as I could tell, did not consider me to be a threat at all. Reaching out for its tail, it finally stood up on its little legs and waddled off - the same strange gait that I'd noticed in the road - and scrambled toward the cover of a nearby creosote.
I looked back at the truck with what I'm sure was a goofy smile. The encounter had roughly the drama of photographing a houseplant, but it's not often I see a new-to-me lizard anymore.
Naturally, we'd end up seeing several more of these apparently-very-common Leopard Lizards over the course of the next few days, but that didn't make this first sighting any less fun, and we chatted about the weird waddle - as well as the enormous size - as we covered the last length of road to the cabin where we planned to eat lunch.
I always take a lot longer to be "done" at these places than my companion. Some of it is because I wander from spot to spot looking for a pleasing angle to take a picture. Some of it is because I like to peek in the various cupboards and drawers looking for a stray gold nugget that the miner left lying around. And some - more and more - is because I like to archive the visitor logs we find. This old mine camp was no exception, and @mrs.turbodb graciously got started making lunch as I poked around the property.
A few cool artifacts hung on the wall.
As I was snapping photos of each page in the visitor log, I heard our family whistle drift up from the parking area below the cabin. Lunch was ready, and so was my belly! Soon, we were munching on rotisserie chicken sandwiches, potato chips, and we even split a bit of lemon cake for dessert!
After lunch, I wrapped up my archiving of the visitor log while @mrs.turbodb took a quick look around. It wouldn't be until later that we'd discover that Emmett - the owner of the cabin - was a rather well-known author, who'd only relatively recently (within the last couple of years) passed away.
Lost Mines of Butte Valley
For one of us, it was nap time. And by nap time, I mean the time we are in the Tacoma after a meal. So, as we wound our way through the rolling roads of Butte Valley, my copilot snuck in what was surely one of her shorter after-lunch naps in recent memory. It was shorter simply because there wasn't a lot of distance between one stop and the next, as we toured from one old forgotten mine site to the next. We were visiting - mostly - because I wanted to drive every road I could find, not knowing where they would lead, and simply orienting myself to the lay of the land. That there were mines - or memories of them - was, for now, simply a bonus!
Naturally, I'd marked a few places of interest along - or beyond - the end of each spur road, and I was most excited to check out one where I'd marked an aerial tramway. Imagine my surprise when, at the end of an entirely different spur, we noticed a steel cable climbing up onto the hillside.
"That doesn't seem right," I mused, pointing at the GPS like it had personally betrayed me. The tramway - according to the dot I had carefully placed at home while squinting at satellite imagery - was a little further east. The actual tramway - a clearly visible steel cable strung up the actual hillside in the actual physical world - was right here. I considered suggesting - albeit briefly - that I was right and the cable was wrong.
Even ignoring the fact that I'd already ordered my first pair of reading glasses, I had to admit that the little red dot probably wasn't going to influence the location of the aerial tramway after all these years, and soon we were scampering up the hillside under the cableway.
Besides the old terminal - and a reasonably-sized pile of waste rock - there wasn't much to see. This had once been a vertical - or nearly so - shaft, judging by the rusty old rail that plunged down into a shallow pit behind the tramway. Time - and the loose, decaying granite - have conspired to close off whatever once buoyed the hopes of those who dug here.
After checking out a few more of my interesting red dots - which amounted to nothing of interest in the physical world - we headed back to the truck for a few more minutes of driving, followed by a few minutes on foot, for the next hour or so.
Although referred to as Robber's Roost, it was more likely the home of a prospector or miner, and perhaps Native Americans before then. Its entrance was once enclosed by a wall with a door, of which only heaps of stones remain. The shaft and partly caved adit in the hills just west of the cave house are part of the Mah Jong Mine, a lead property originally located by Carl Mengel in 1924.Hiking Death Valley
Through it all, the highlight remained consistent. No matter where we were or what we saw, a quick glance over our shoulder reminded me why this has always been my favorite spot in the park. There's a reason Butte Valley has been described as Shangri-La, and as the shadows began to grow longer, we stopped frequently to soak it all in.
A New Favorite Camp Site
We are unaccustomed to the sun setting after 5:30pm in Death Valley. Most of the time this is both a blessing and a curse. It ensures that we get plenty of sleep - usually heading to bed no more than two hours after the stars come out - but it also means that we're always in a rush. With between 10 and 11 hours to explore on any given day, an otherwise reasonable 12-mile hike becomes an all-day affair.
And so, it was a strange feeling to find our itinerary exhausted with more than two hours until the sun dropped below the ridge of the Panamint Mountains, much less the horizon. On this trip, where I'd hoped to slow down and savor a special spot in the park, even time was on our side. It was time to head to camp.
Working our way along a narrow ridge overlooking the entirety of Butte Valley, we spotted a pair of trucks already tucked into the rocky outcrop that we'd camped at the previous evening, and that we planned to inhabit for the second night in a row. Or not.
But once again, things just seemed to fall into place out here. A short spur in the ridge road led to the most fabulous overlook. The perfect spot to level the truck, set up the tent, and relax for a couple hours before dinner. So that's exactly what we did.
After one of the more relaxing evenings we've spent in Death Valley, the sun finally did slip down behind the mountains, an indication that it was time for dinner and then a bit more reading before dozing off again, not far from where we'd started our day.
I didn't know what the next day would bring, exactly, but Striped Butte was right there, looking deceptively doable in the way that mountains do right up until you start gaining elevation. And there was a good chance we'd be hoofing our way to the top of the banded butte if we could muster the courage to climb its recumbent folds.
The Whole Story
