Five years ago now, I received an email that began thusly. Needless to say, I was intrigued.
I just wanted to drop a quick line to say howdy. I only recently stumbled across your site and felt a bit of deja vu. I'm a photographer and I've spent the last 3-4yrs exploring the western side of North America in my 1998 Taco (with 400k miles on her!) and have been to a lot of the same amazing places you have. Luckily, you've been to a lot of places I haven't as well and given me some great inspiration. It seems we have a similar passion for finding out of the way places and interesting historic & pre-historic sites.
Death Valley has become something of an obsession for me. I've spent 2-3mo there each of the last 3 winters and we almost certainly must have crossed paths at some point. lol. I've driven most of its legal roads and done over 60 hikes and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface there. I had thought I'd found most of the best petroglyphs in the park, but your website actually turned me on to the ████████████████ canyon. It's great to know there's still more out there to discover. And (unless you're holding certain locations back from your website) there's several stunning places in DV that you guys have yet to discover. Haha.
Since then, Matthew and I have sporadically traded emails, sharing an amazing place one of us had found, fishing for hints to a place that we hadn't, and laughing as we repeatedly missed each other in similar locations by mere hours.
Now, finally, we've gotten our acts together - just enough, which is asking a lot - for a meet up in our favorite National Park. The plan - to the extent we have one - is to wander our way from Eureka to Saline Valley, climbing into the Saline Range in search of the unknown.
I wonder what it'll be like to meet myself, and hear stories of all the places I've gone, but just a little bit different.
Meeting Matthew | Deja Vu #1 - Five years ago now, I received an email that began thusly. Needless to say, I was intrigued. I just wanted to drop a quick line to say howdy. I only recently stumbled across your site and felt a bit of deja vu. I'm a photographer and I've spent the last 3-4yrs exploring the western side of North America in my 1998 Taco (with 400k miles on her!) and have been to a lot of the same amazing places you have. Luckily, you've been to a lot of places I haven't as well and given me some great inspiration. It seems…
Crooked Dike Canyon | Deja Vu #2 - It was a cold night camped above Steel Pass. At 5,000 feet, it was 31°F - about 10°F cooler than it'd been at our lower-elevation-camp the previous evening - just before sunrise. Luckily, my electric socks made going to bed easy, and two down comforters kept me nice and toasty until it was time to roll out of bed in the morning. I was relieved to see that I was Matthew @Beardilocks was still around; I hadn't scared him off on our first day together! Grabbing my down puffy from the cab and pulling my beanie down over my ears,…
From Saline Peak to Black Top Benchmark | Deja Vu #3 - Sunrise on the Inyo. One of the things I'd really appreciated about my time with Matthew @Beardilocks was the speed at which we moved. It was slower. As someone who lives in his truck and spends several months a year in Death Valley, he's in no real rush. On the other hand, I always feel like I've only got a couple of days to squeeze in as much as I can. It was freeing to move at Matthew's pace, but hard habits die hard and given that I'd be hiking Saline Peak solo, I was - once again - up…
A Tour of Cabins | Deja Vu #4 - For the third morning in a row, I woke up along Steel Pass Road. Unlike the previous days, the Tacoma was the only vehicle in sight, and I was alone in the desert. I'd hoped for a repeat of the clear skies I'd had the previous morning, but the nicely tinted clouds were a reasonable substitute. Today was going to be the day that I summited Waucoba Mountain - the high point of the Inyo Mountains - but I'd gotten a glimpse of it from Saline Peak the previous morning and it was covered in snow that looked to be…
Rock Art of the Saline Valley | Deja Vu #5 - Before I get started, I want to call out two very important administrative items in regard to this story. In the eight years I've been exploring Death Valley National Park, I've spent almost no time in the Saline Range. Turns out, this is true for most Death Valley regulars, and there's almost no information available about a range that borders two of the parks most prominent valleys! Keen to address my lack of experience - or at least, begin to address it - I met up with Matthew @Beardilocks who found himself in a similar position, and spent nearly a week…