I've found no place in all my exploration of Death Valley National Park that I like more than waking up to a view of Striped Butte. You can imagine then - sleeping in our tents less than a mile away - that I had more than one alarm set in order to ensure my alertness when as the sun began to illuminate the sky. With the skies clear after an evening of rain, and before the sun even crested the horizon, I soaked in one of my favorite sights in the world. I spent nearly an hour hopping around behind,…
10 CommentsTag: gold mine
I think the night we spent in the Panamints was the most peaceful of the trip. Sheltered from the wind, our high elevation resulted in cool temps - always better for sleeping in my book... to an extent, anyway. Having arrived at dusk the night before, none of us had a chance to look around our camp site before it was too dark to really see anything. So, though it was cloudy, I was up and looking around relatively early the next morning. Mike found a spot on what appeared to be an old garage pad. Certainly was level! As…
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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…
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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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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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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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It was a little before 2:00pm when I rejoined the main road through Mason Valley and headed north. I wasn't sure how far I'd get, but the views were great and though I wished for a little more blue sky, I really had no complaints as I crested a hill near the southern end of the valley, a grove of cottonwoods following the creek, below. Into the mountains. Always fun to zoom in and compress the background a little bit in situations like this. Apparently, I took a lot of photos here. A few minutes later I was driving into…
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For the last eight months or so, I've been trying to get us down to the area along the Nevada-California border to explore the area west of Walker Lake (Nevada) and northeast of Mono Lake (California). One of the highlights - I hoped - would be summiting Mt. Patterson. For some reason, it seems that each time I made a plan, something would come up - another trip, bad weather, all the National Forests in California closing - that kind of thing. And, as it got later in the year, I'd pretty much written off the trip - after-all, by…
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It's been over a year since I was last in Idaho, and boy did I miss it! So, after spending a few weeks at home upon returning from the New Mexico Backcountry Discovery Route (NMBDR), and with @mrs.turbodb heading out on a camping trip with her dad, late July seemed like the perfect time for me to whip up a little something in the Sawtooths. The key word there being "seemed." I'd been collecting places to go - some of them from roads not travelled on earlier trips, others discovered online one way or the other, and one in particular…
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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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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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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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Our spirits still high having hiked Funeral Slot Canyon and from our encounter with the F-16 as we climbed past Father Crowley Point, we turned off onto Saline Valley Road, just a little after 3:45pm. It was 45 minutes before sunset, and with quite a few miles to go before we reached the area we wanted to camp, which - to this point - I'd only narrowed down to somewhere on Hunter Mountain. While airing down, I saw a spec in the distance. A bird, I thought initially, turning to tend to the next tire. But something in my brain…
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I don't know whether it's an "oh, duh!" moment, or "can you believe it?" situation, but less than two weeks after returning from our Death Valley trip along the Nadeau Trail, we were headed back for more! I was jazzed, and - a little surprisingly to me - so was @mrs.turbodb! This time, the land area we'd cover would be larger than the last, with our plan to see several places that we've meant to visit over the last few years but that we've never gotten to - largely because there's only so much you can see on a given…
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Having gone to bed early - partly because sunset was at quarter-to-five, but mostly because we're old-and-boring - I'd mentioned to @mrs.turbodb that we should also get up early because while the Nadeau Trail might only be 27 miles long, all of our side trips would mean a couple more packed days of adventure. I'm not sure she ever agreed, but I set my alarm for 5:00am regardless. There was no color in the sky when I awoke, but the breeze was warm and inviting, so I climbed out of the tent and waited. Slowly, color. And a little more -…
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You might expect that we were out of the house early for the ~18 hour drive from the Seattle area to Death Valley, but you'd be wrong. It was 8:00am when we pulled out of the driveway, and pointed the truck south towards our destination. Before long, the city gave way to open space, the golden glow in stark contrast to the cloudy skies we were leaving behind. That wasn't all we were leaving behind - not by a long shot. It was Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - one day after a rather interesting election for our country. We'd purposefully…
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Having gone to bed at elevation, and a little worried about how cool it would get, I'd placed a Little Hottie warmer in each of my socks as I climbed into bed. For anyone wanting to keep warm at night, I can't recommend these enough - they have made nights much more comfortable for me - and more importantly, @mrs.turbodb, on several occasions! In fact, so warm were the hotties that I woke in the middle of the night with my feet - and therefore the rest of me - too hot! A good problem to have at 10,000 feet…
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We were up bright an early the next morning - all of us having gotten a good sleep at our "low" elevation of 8500 feet - so we could get out of camp by 8:00am. Mike @Digiratus was even up early enough to make himself a cup of coffee before packing up - quite the feat, when Dan @drr, Monte @Blackdawg, Devin @MissBlackdawg and I were up as late as we could possibly be in order to still be ready to roll! The reason for our early departure was that we had an actual plan for the day. Actually, we'd…
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