We were all pretty tired after our long drives south, so once we finally headed to bed - some six hours or so after firing up Mike @Digiratus propane fire ring - I think we all slept quite well through the night; our little spot in Hidden Valley out of the way enough that no one passed by while we were there. As usual, I set my alarm for too-early-o'clock in the morning and made my way back up and into the Lost Burro Mine site to capture the color as it crept into the sky. It would be our only…
6 CommentsTag: california
I'm one lucky dude. Having just gotten back from two trips to Death Valley - (Lowest Peak in the Park) (Highest Peak in the Park) - over a three-week period, I'm now headed back for my third trip in a month! But, frequency isn't the only reason I'm excited. Every year, a few buddies get together for an annual outing - usually in early fall - to explore and hang out. For me, it all started when I tagged along on my first major trip - The De-Tour - and I've been hooked ever since. This year, truck problems and smoky…
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On a ridge at 8,133 feet above sea level, Mahogany Flats campground is reasonably well-known for cold, windy conditions. Luckily for us, the wind wasn't too bad, but temps did drop down into the 30s for much of the night - a nice change, actually, given that we we'd brought along two down comforters and had been rather warm on the first couple nights of this trip. We'd camped here - unusual for us, given that it is a campground and we generally prefer a more secluded setting - the night before in order to set ourselves up well for…
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Sleep came quickly on our tailings platform nestled into the drainage high in the Panamint Mountains. Sheltered from the wind, and with temperatures in the low-40°F range, it was one of the most pleasant nights of sleep I've had in a long time. It wasn't quite as good for @mrs.turbodb, but she certainly welcomed the nearly 11 hours of shut eye after the slog of driving we'd endured over the previous 48 hours. I'd set my alarm for just before sunrise, but my internal clock was having none of that silliness, and I awoke three minutes before Toto's Africa came…
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The 20-hour drive home - that concluded our Lowest Peak in the Park - aka Into the Owlsheads trip - gave me a lot of time to think. The trip had been brilliant, with some predictable highlights, and some unexpected surprises. And I have to admit that joking around as we climbed Owl Peak - that it was the lowest in the park, perfect for the serial underachiever - had been a lot of fun. But it also got me thinking. In the nearly four years that I've been visiting Death Valley, Owl Peak is the only summit I've ever climbed. And,…
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We arrived at Alabama Hills and started looking for somewhere to call home at 8:30pm on a Saturday night - surely not an ideal time to show up at such a popular location. Tired from our hike to - and through - Military Canyon earlier in the day, the first several spots we checked were occupied, but eventually we found a secluded-enough spot nestled in the rocks and leveled the truck. Fifteen minutes later, we were brushing our teeth and climbing into bed - each of us ready for some well-deserved shut-eye. The catch - there's always a catch -…
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One of the things that surprised us when we climbed into the tent just after 6:30pm, was that there wasn't much wind up on the top of the platform. Not that we were complaining. But it wouldn't last. By midnight, it was windy and we'd both put in our ear plugs to quiet the flapping of the tent fabric, as larger gusts rocked us in and out of sleep. Still, by sunrise - some 12 hours later - we'd both gotten enough sleep to feel reasonably well rested, and certainly more energized than we'd been after our hikes the day…
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Thankfully, the wind tunnel that can occur through the Lost Lake valley didn't materialize overnight, and we slept reasonably well, with the entire place to ourselves. I was up - as usual - just before sunrise, and the light was fantastic. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that I'd changed the settings on the camera to capture the Milky Way the previous evening - plus I failed to notice anything in the little viewfinder on the back as I reviewed them in the moment - and so I ended up with some very soft, very noisy shots that I've done my best to…
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I have no better way to describe the impetus for this trip than Michel Digonnet has so expertly done in Hiking Death Valley. One read of this, and I was sold - it was time to visit the Owlshead Mountains. At the south end of Death Valley, between the imposing Panamints and the mysterious Avawatz Mountains, the land gathers up into a colorful aggregate of low ranges collectively known as the Owlshead Mountains. Believed to be the eroded and partly collapsed remnant of a once much taller range, they consist of a roughly circular arrangement of hills surrounding two dry…
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After two nights of restless sleep, I slept well at the Chemung Mine. Legend has it that a ghost haunts the property, but luckily for me it was a Friday night - one of the six nights each week that the poltergeist is a peacefully content. Apparently if I'd been there on a Saturday evening, things could have gotten interesting. I awoke only once during the night - right around 2:00am - when a flurry of snow was passing overhead, the tick, tick, tick of ice on the rain fly, rousing me from my sleep. I'm never happy about the…
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Having not gotten much sleep the night before, I thought I'd conk out and sleep through the night here on my ridge in the Pine Grove Hills. No such luck, however - instead I wandered in and out of sleep, a little worried that the wind and rain would pick up during the night. Neither of those things happened, and a few minutes before my alarm went off, I decided I'd read a bit as I waited for color to spill across the sky. With views to both the east and west, I knew that this could be a primo…
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Heading north on CA-99, I was obviously going to have to stop somewhere along the way in order eat lunch. It just so happens that my favorite restaurant in the world is in Turlock, and as I pulled at 11:57am, my timing couldn't have been more perfect. The chips are simply a mechanism to get the cabbage salsa into your mouth. #2 - Quesadilla supreme with chile verde, guac, rice and beans. $12.50. I don't know what I was thinking, but unlike usual, when I order two or three (or more) plates to go, I only ordered one this time,…
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With Pops heading home after a better-than-we-could-have-hoped day at his favorite camp site, I figured that I ought to explore a bit more of the forest to see the effects of the Fire in a few more places that have become special over the years. And so, after hugs, smiles, and the knowledge that we could return in the future, Dad turned left and I turned right - leaving each other in literal clouds of dust. Even before we'd headed out, I'd speculated that the likelihood of me ending up back in our same camp site after running into closed…
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The last couple years have been tough on the forests of California. According to data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2020 saw more burned acreage - 4.4 million acres - than any recorded year in history. More than 2.5 million additional acres have already burned as of September 30, 2021. Two of these fires - the 2020 Fire, and the 2021 Dixie Fire - had the largest impact on me, the Fire burning through my Dad's favorite camp site, and the Dixie Fire nearly destroying the homes of two of my Uncles (and their families). These…
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I only woke up once in the middle of the night. I was mostly toasty under the comforters, but the top of my head was a bit chilly, so I put on my knit hat as I took a peek through the tent doors to see if it'd snowed yet. To my surprise, not only was there no snow on the ground, but the sky was crystal clear! And so, it was with happy thoughts that I drifted back to sleep - my alarm now set for early-o'clock, having hatched a new plan for sunrise! Of course, my happy plan…
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It was almost exactly noon when I rolled into the southeast corner of the Volcanic Tablelands from US-6. It was the same location that exactly a week earlier, I'd run over my Canon 80D and favorite lens, that I'd been using to shoot for the last three years. Needless to say, I hoped that my third time to this beautiful place would be the charm, as I made my way north along Fish Slough. I'd already decided that I'd take things a bit more slowly this time - I had two days set aside to wander - and before long,…
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Morning didn't bring completely clear skies, but dang if it wasn't nice to wake up to more blue than gray, the sun streaming in beneath the clouds that still filled the eastern horizon. Temps were chilly - in the low 30s °F - but I was a happy camper since the weather forecast had suggested a good chance of rain, but the tent was dry. I set about eating breakfast and packing up as soon as I was down the ladder, since I knew this would be my most busy day of the trip. Not only did I plan to…
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I'd been home less than a week after Tragedies in the Tablelands, and I still had the itch to get out and see everything I'd planned before things went all wonky. Even as we'd been driving home from that trip, I was ordering a new camera and lenses, and I was already checking the weather forecast to see how long it would be until snow rendered the area impassable for the remainder of winter. The good news was that the camera equipment showed up in a few days. The bad news was that there were only a few more before…
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Having recently visited the Volcanic Tablelands for the first time in search of and petroglyphs, we'd been delighted with what we'd found. So delighted, in fact, that I started researching the area for a return trip as soon as we got home! As I searched, I realized we could spend several days in the area, wandering. Additional petroglyph sites, old mines, and views - of the Sierra Mountains to the west and the White Mountains to the east - would fill our days. That sounded great to us. Unfortunately, things had a way of working themselves out just a little…
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With just over a week to explore the Mojave National Preserve, our spirits were high as we headed south out of the gloomy Pacific Northwest towards a forecast full of sun and warmer - during the day - temps. We'd made a similar pilgrimage last year and had a great time, an unexpected snow storm making for a unique - if a bit chilly - experience. And so, after 20 hours of driving - and only a couple hours sleep at Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge - we arrived at the north east corner of the Preserve: the Clark Mountains. This would…
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