We didn't know it when we awoke to the beauty of Bluff Lake, but we'd end up at an even more beautiful location - Tamarack Lake - by the time the sun was setting again. First though, we had to get there. And that meant getting going toward our summit of the highest peak around, Mt. Eddy. First light. When you want to be on the waterfront. So peaceful in the warm glow before sunrise. With an eight-mile hike ahead of us, @mrs.turbodb got breakfast prepped - cereal and the last of our home-grown blueberries - while I put away…
11 CommentsTag: hiking
I never used to be a peakbagger. For a long time, I never even really hiked to the tops of mountains. And then, sort of as a joke, I built an entire trip to Death Valley's Owlshead Mountains to hike the Lowest Peak in the Park. Because if you're going to hike a peak, why not the lowest? That led to hiking the highest, and I'm now a little more than halfway through hitting the highest peaks in the Death Valley ranges. I'm still not a peakbagger, but I have found that I like a good summit. Today would be…
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2026 in the Pacific Northwest has been a summer of smoke. With fires raging in eastern Washington, all of Oregon, and much of southern British Columbia, all the places we usually enjoy exploring during the summer have suddenly become... unpleasant. In fact, while we'd previously thought that a beginning-of-July timeframe for the Montana BDR was too early, it's now looking like the smartest move we could have made. And our escape to Bella Coola for a few days - while a little hazy from fire - turned out to be genius. And so, itching to explore - while being able…
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While on our last trip to British Columbia, we happened to stumble upon a few petroglyphs, created by the First Nations, hundreds or thousands of years ago. They were so different than those that we've seen in the lower 48, and reminded me a bit of the style that found in Hawaii. Upon returning home though, I think it may have been the surfaces - ground-level rocks with petroglyphs on various faces - more than the actual figures, that seemed similar. We arrived at the stie on our way from one place to another. Getting there meant an enjoyable, short…
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There's no camp site more special than the one I visit with Dad every year in the Sierra. I've been going for a lot less time than he has - though he assures me that I'm gaining on him, as a percentage of my age to his - but we've both come to enjoy the time we spend there each summer. It was a shock then, when we found our favorite spot inaccessible last summer! With 459 trees down over the road - some of them more than 4 feet in diameter - there was no way we could clear…
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While Tacoma troubles may have prevented me reaching the summit of Waucoba Mountain on the first day of my trip, my failure to reach the top of Mt. Tom on the second day had me hoping for a bit of redemption. Luckily, I had a final day in my schedule before I had to head to the other side of the Sierra for a trip with Pops, so I decided to backtrack in the hopes of knocking one more summit off my list of Death Valley High Points. Wanting to get an early start, I arrived at the trailhead -…
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It was dark at 4:00am, but the moon was out and I could see just the hint of light on the horizon as I pulled on a sweatshirt and began folding up the tent. Camped at just under 7,400 feet, I'd gotten my first good night of sleep in three days, banking nearly ten hours of shut-eye as a cool Sierra breeze streamed down the canyon overnight. I'd need every minute of that recharge; the day was going to be a doozy. Not that I ever really stood any chance of keeping up with Matt @theesotericone. By 4:17am, I started…
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Putting Bannister House behind us for the time being, we continued our trek through Grand Gulch towards Pollys Canyon. There wasn't a chance we'd make it all the way in a single day - that would be backpacking insanity - but we still wanted to get a few more miles under our belt before calling it quits for the day. In fact, we were hoping to get to the Big Pour - where I'd heard from the BLM that there was some "doesn't look great" water, since it's always nice to have plenty of water for dinner, a face wash…
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Last year, we got our second taste of Grand Gulch, and even before we returned home, I knew I wanted to hike the whole thing. Not all at once - I'm insane, but not that insane - but over the course of several trips. Almost immediately we knocked out a big chunk of the route when we took @mini.turbodb on her first ever - and still only - backpacking trip, putting a serious dent in the northern half of the Gulch in the process. Note: she has not - to date - requested a repeat performance. She does still speak…
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Having had a wonderful three days in Butte Valley and the Panamint Mountains, our flight out of Las Vegas wasn't until 8:00pm, which afforded us an unusual opportunity: a leisurely morning in camp and plenty of time to work our way east. Knowing this, we'd also planned to take care of a few items we'd deferred on the last several trips - washing the Tacoma, vacuuming the interior of the cab, unloading all of the recycling that'd been piling up in the Trasharoo since December - all things that needed doing, but "eventually." Anyway, things were going to plan as…
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Energized after our morning climb up Striped Butte, we'd pretty much wrapped up everything I'd planned for our three days in Butte Valley. Still, a big part of a visit to this Shangri-La is the 4wd route through Mengel Pass and Goler Wash - both of which had been heavily impacted by storms in late 2025 - so exiting out to Panamint Valley would give us a chance to check out the road conditions as well as a couple other attractions that I was curious about along the way. Goodbye, Striped Butte, you were as mesmerizing as always! Making it…
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Good morning, Striped Butte. Unlike the previous morning - where I'd been so excited to be in Butte Valley that I'd woken up nearly an hour before sunrise - I was able to sleep in a little later on our second morning. But not much. The reason was right out the tent window. There was - so to speak - an elephant in the valley. An elephant known as Striped Butte. For all my love of this place, we'd never climbed its imposing slopes, and I knew that if we didn't climb them today, it could be years before we'd…
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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. Is it time yet? 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. Good morning, Striped Butte. Like the feeling of relief that…
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We were parked on the alluvial fan of Warm Springs Canyon, which is a fancy way of saying we'd voluntarily set up camp at the mouth of a wind tunnel. A tunnel that - not long after we got settled in bed - was, predictably, performing flawlessly. Luckily, we'd oriented the tent in such a way that we were in no danger of it folding up with us inside, so after closing the door flap - to prevent direct hits from the oncoming blasts - we were rocked to sleep through the remainder of the night. We'd both wish we'd…
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Ever since our very first trip to Death Valley - when we passed through Butte Valley for a single night - I've loved this little pocket of paradise in the Panamint Mountains. While many seem to take joy in the cabins sprinkled around its perimeter, the highlight - for me - has always been a pile of granite boulders with the most fabulous view of Striped Butte. I am not the first to enjoy this place; it has certainly been a resting point for thousands of years. Still, I've never spent more than a few daylight hours in this wonderful…
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It was a little windy when we closed our eyes on our own little patch of slickrock sandstone, but sometime during the night - after air temperatures equalized a bit - it calmed down and there was barely a breeze when our alarm went off about 20 minutes before sunrise. Our new-to-us Big Agnes Copper Spur UL 3 tent worked so much better than the semi-self-standing tent we had previously. Unlike most mornings where we might hit the snooze button once or twice, we were up and about almost immediately. Knowing that the forecast was for even hotter temperatures than…
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It's been more than a year since I visited my first Grand Canyon Polychrome site out on the Esplanade and I've been very curious to get back and look for more of these wonderful pictographs. Naturally, being rock art - and a relatively rare variety at that - the locations of the sites are a closely guarded secret by those lucky enough to know them. I'd hoped to finally meet and head out on a hike with of adventr.co - one of the foremost rock art enthusiasts I know - but family matters came up and he was unable to…
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We had no idea what sort of controversy we were about to stir up as we worked the Tacoma up the road-turned-wash-turned-road-turned-wash that is Canyon at the northern end of the Nadeau Trail. Somehow - since I'm usually one to visit any cabins along a route I take, and we've driven the Nadeau Trail in the past - this was entirely new terrain for us, and I was looking forward to checking out and its associated mining operations. Luckily, while the drive up the wash was an exercise in route-finding, it wasn't anything difficult for the Tacoma, which looked right…
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As a windstorm raged out in Panamint Valley - gusts over 50mph whipping up dust and sand - we enjoyed a reasonably peaceful night tucked away in the lower reaches of Thompson Canyon. With the CVT ladder tied down, earplugs, and the strenuous activity of the previous day, we slept very well and very long. In fact, knowing that we had less hiking in front of us today than the preceding two, we didn't even get up before sunrise. Heck, we burned through more than an hour of daylight by the time we climbed down the ladder for some Wheat…
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After a fun morning finding an abandoned tractor high above Snow Canyon, we tucked ourselves into the Tacoma and set off for what I knew would be a much harder hike. As the crow flies, our jumping off point in was less than a mile from where we'd found the tractor, but constrained to the unmaintained road system that reaches into the Argus Range, we had upwards of 15 miles to reach the trailhead in a way that didn't entail jumping off a cliff. Our departing view from Snow Canyon was pretty nice. As we entered Canyon, Lookout Mountain towered…
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