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 mid-October, and at 11,654 feet, the highest point in the Sweetwater Mountains would surely be inaccessible.
Still, with several days open on the calendar, I made plans for us to head south and give it a shot. We might have to come back for the summit, but it seems we always want to return for more exploration no matter where we go.
And so began the rush - first to get the truck ready, and then to experience the wide-open spaces before one of the largest storms in California's history ripped through the area. But now - as usual - I'm getting ahead of myself...
In Search of Warm Water | Last Minute 1 - 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…
Into the Mountains | Last Minute 2 - 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…
Unexpected Success | Last Minute 3 - 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…
The Town of Bodie | Last Minute 4 - 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…
Rig Review - What worked and what didn't in Death Valley? - 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…