December 15, 2021. It's been three months since the last rig review, and in that time I've put another 10,000 miles on the Tacoma. With a nearly catastrophic failure, as well as a few great successes, it's time to dive into the good and the bad from the last several trips: Last Minute Rush (Oct 2021) Lowest Peak in the Park - aka Into the Owlsheads (Nov 2021) Highest Peak in the Park - aka Pushing into the Panamints (Nov 2021) Back for More (Dec 2021) Seemingly solved from previous Rig Reviews The Axle Housing is Cracked Oil Leaking from…
5 CommentsTag: Into the Owlsheads
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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