Monthly ArchiveMarch 2006
Sightseeing 24 Mar 2006 04:14 pm
Kolob Canyon
On a business trip to Cedar City, Utah, managed to take a side trip to Kolob Canyon, a section of Zion National Park with a five-mile one-way scenic drive just off Interstate 15 between Cedar City and St. George. This panorama is a composite of four photos taken at the final viewpoint.
Camping & Hiking & Sightseeing 21 Mar 2006 11:59 pm
Death Valley, March 18-21, 2006
A wonderful camping and hiking expedition to Death Valley National Park with M.
Saturday. Left Reno at 7:15 a.m. Lots of snow along U.S. Highway 395, just a little packed snow on the road between Gardnerville and Bridgeport to slow us down. Some fog and clouds; Mt. Whitney was not visible. Ate lunch at a new Quizno’s in Bishop, bought gas at Lone Pine before the turnoff onto Cal. Highway 190. Stopped for the wonderful view of Panimint Valley from Father Crowley Point. (Unlike last time I was here with family, no filming-crew helicopter crash had closed the road requiring a 3-hour detour through Ridgecrest to go the next 20 miles!)We arrived at Stovepipe Wells at 3:15 p.m., then another hour for the 8-mile road to the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon and finding a camping spot inside the canyon. For the record, that’s nine hours from Reno with only a few short stops for lunch, gas, and scenic views on the way. We stopped at the Ranger Station at Stovepipe Wells to buy the national park pass ($20/vechicle for 7 days) and to ask about conditions. The ranger told us that “Law Enforcement had reported” water on the road to Cottonwood Canyon for about 3/4 miles near Stovepipe Wells. He asked whether water had been flowing over Highway 190 up the way at Emigrant Wash. Answer: no, just standing. So he advised it would probably okay to drive with a 4WD, the danger being that still-flowing water could cause a washout. The ranger also said the Marble Canyon road had washed out last year, but use since then had created a new rough road. So we set off for Cottonwood Canyon.
The road up the alluvial fan to Cottonwood indeed had standing and running water, in the low section that has been sandy in dry times. The graded ridges at the edge of the road were actually channelling the water from higher creating a stream on the road! Fortunately, the surface below the water was reasonably firm, so it was fine as we drove slowly and tried to keep to the higher sides. Got a coating of mud on the wheelwells and running boards, splatters on the windshields and roof. Creosote bushes were in bloom at this elevation (5 ft at Stovepipe Wells to 700 ft at the mouth of the canyon). The weather was partly sunny, changing to mostly cloudy later in the evening.
Campsite selection is always a little stressful–should you take a decent or marginal site that’s available or drive on hoping for a better place? We drove a ways past the canyon opening, past several “bank” campsites, then found a place on the far (north) side of the canyon a bit removed from the road in the wash. It had a bench made out of a large log (no trees in sight, you wonder about the magnitude of the flood that wash logs and big boulders down the canyon) and a good tent site, and was still in view of the the main Death Valley and the Funeral Mountains. That’s good for seeing the colors change at sunset, but at night it turned out we also had a view of the lights of the Stovepipe Wells RV camp and a seemingly straight line of view with the car headlights along the highway, surprisingly and a bit irritatingly bright for being 8-10 miles away. C’est la vie. (For future reference: if arriving earlier before dark, I would consider driving all the way into the Marble Canyon branch of the canyon, past the first narrows in Cottonwood Canyon and the Cottonwood/Marble fork, and camping where the valley opens up again with a view of the Funeral Mountains. There aren’t a lot of ideal campsites, but it should be possible to find something.)
On the hill above our campsite was a not-so-well-camoflaged solar-powered antenna, so before setting up camp we did a little exploratory hike. The antenna was connected to some kind of measuring device in the ground, but we couldn’t tell what it was. On the way down the hill, the wind came up and there were a few sprinkles (go figure–rain on the weekend we choose to go to Death Valley–less 2 inches precipitation per year), so we rushed to set up camp. Dinner fare was standard noodle packs and tuna, with a dehydrated Rasberry Cobbler dessert. Some stars were out, but it soon turned cloudier, windier, and colder, so an early bedtime was welcome.
Sunday. The main adventure on Sunday was a day hike up Marble Canyon. We drove up Marble Canyon as far as K. felt comfortable, not too far from the first narrows. Track and photos and a movie through the slot canyon that M. made (definitely a cinematic masterpiece!) are elsewhere [to be linked once I figure out a semi-permanent hosting site]. We went farther in than I remember going before, just short of the Dead Horse Canyon junction, then turned around because of the time, although the hike back was shorter in time and longer in distance than I expected. The only people we met on the actual hike were three backpackers coming down Marble, doing the Cottonwood/Marble loop, as we went up past the main narrows. We caught back up with them at the big boulder blockage on the way down. Looking very tired out, they passed our campsite later in the day after we returned to camp. On the drive back to camp, though, we met a VERY large group of backpapers, probably about 30 in three groups, evidently a church group on the first leg of a trip and with many of them looking less than entirely joyous already with big packs. So we were glad not to have a closer encounter.Other highlights of the hike: Tracks and scat from a large cloven-hoofed mammal all along the trail through Marble Canyon. Latter identified as a Desert Bighorn Sheep (from the stuffed on in the Visitors Centers). We would have loved to have seen it ambling down the canyon! We also saw a dead and partially decomposed fox, just lying in the middle of the wash. What is the predator?Because the homemade chicken stew was still mostly frozen in the ice chest, we had coucous with canned beef stew for supper. Dessert was backpackers Blueberry Cheesecake (not quite as good and more complicated to make than the Rasberry Cobbler). The stars were out in full force, a glorious Death Valley night sky. Not much ‘action’, though–I just saw one small shooting star. We were surprised by a noise of our plastic garbage sack rustling, turned on the flashlight, and saw two eyes peering back in the darkness! A kit fox, about the size of the dead one we had seen on the trail. Way too accustomed to interactions with humans, apparently.
Monday We broke camp in the morning and spent the day sightseeing in the main part of the park. [Photo album elsewhere, to be linked.] First, a short hike up Mosaic Canyon near Stovepipe Wells. After brief stop at the sand dunes, we took the nature boardwalk at Salt Creek (saw the Desert Pupfish in the salty water–what’s the source of this water?), then stopped at the Harmony Borax Works ruins and drove through Mustard Canyon. Did a brief visit to the Visitors Center in Furnace Creek, where no reliable information was available about conditions in backcountry canyons for potential camping sites. We inspected Texas Spring Campground–definitely nicer than the RV parking lots at Stovepipe Wells and the Sunset Campground at Furnace Creek and plenty of available spaces around 1 p.m. on a Monday, but much less-than-ideal closely packed compsites and we decided to try for an isolated backcountry site again. We drove down to Badwater (at 285 feet below sea level the lowest point in the U.S.) and walked out on the salt flat a little way. Then we went to the Natural Bridge trailhead (new place for me). There were very high winds, so we ate a late lunch of crackers, summer sausage, and cheese in the Explorer. The natural bridge was closer to the trailhead, larger and more impressive than I had expected, and there were interesting erosion patterns and dry falls farther up the canyon. For a place with so little rainfall, it’s amazing how the effects of water–eroded canyons and alluvial fans and washes–are so highly evident everywhere. After Natural Bridge, we had limited time before dark to find a campsite, so we skipped Artists Drive and just did a brief visit to Devil’s Golfcourse. I’ve been there at least four times now, but it’s always amazing. Then we headed to Trail Canyon via the Westside Road. The side road to the canyon is very rough in places but was passable. Again, some uncertainty whether to take one of the few tent-spots that had been cleared just beyond the 2-mile camping restriction up the canyon road or go on for something better. But we found a great spot just inside the broad opening of the canyon, a gravel parking area off the road on the alluvial fan with a 4-ft shelf of the wash perfect for the campstove and lantern, and a higher bench with a cleared tent spot. After a good dinner of chicken stew with rice (too much, but we ate it all), we watched the stars in the rain. … Indeed, it kept sprinkling even though the stars were out above us and even upwind behind us. A cloud bank over the Telescope Peak range was evidently producing rain that was blowing out in the high wind and falling on us. Later, the wind came up, it clouded over, and really rained–enough to send us inside the tent. The tent stood up fine in high winds, but flapped noisily for a long time.
Tuesday. Sunny again in the morning. Sad to leave and a bit dreading the long drive back to Reno. Before breaking camp, we took a nice stroll up the road, maybe a mile. Good thing we camped where we did, there were no more decent camping spots at least that far. We got back to the higway around 10 a.m., and calculated we had just enough time to do Artists Drive and still make it back to Reno by early evening. [Photo album elsewhere.] Very nice, amazingly colorful formation and unusuall erosion patterns. I had just done this once in the early 1990s with my parents. We did a couple short side hikes, took one hour for the nine-mile one-way drive.
There was a not-so-short delay on Daylight Pass because of road reconstruction, then we stopped at Rhyolite, a ghost town on BLM land outside the park off the highway to Beatty. Got the rundown on the Bottle House from the ever-eccentric caretaker and looked around a little at the runs and the desert outdoor art gallery. [Photos] Then it was back to the highway, home via U.S. 95 (Beatty/Tonopah/Hawthorn/Fallon), snacked on not-so-healthy food all day but didn’t stop for lunch or dinner, and got back to Reno around 7 p.m. (8 hours from the end of Artists Drive).
This was a fabulous trip and adventure that I will treasure sharing with M.
Snowshoeing 12 Mar 2006 11:04 pm
Martis Peak
Snowshoe hike to Martis Peak lookout from Brockway Summit, with Michael and Joe.
The weather today was mostly cloudy to partly sunny with snow flurries and blizzards, sometimes all at the same time! The view from the lookout was mostly cloudy. There were snowmobiles at the start, but we only were passed on the trail by one grouip.
The access road is about 0.3 miles north of Brockway Summit on California state highway 267. Park off the highway, there is usually a plowed area. Lots of snowmobile trails in this area and lots of roads can make for difficult navigation. About 1.3 miles from the highway, where the main road straight ahead starts downhill, the ski route to the lookout makes a very sharp left. Look for blue diamonds trail markers, small brown plastic squares with engraved arrows, and older large painted dotted-triangle lookout symbols on trees. The brown arrows signs don’t go all the way to the lookout, however, that trail heads left to an unknown destination a couple miles from the top. Another 0.6 miles beyond the sharp left turn, after a gentle downhill run, is a clearing where at least five roads meet; the lookout route is marked by blue diamonds and heads “straight” ahead, uphill. There may be several other forks farther on, but these depend on snowmobile or skier/snowshoe tracks; usually you can follow the “main” snowmobile tracks, but it helps to have a GPS to stay on the road–we didn’t always manage that. About a mile from the top, the road reaches the top of a ridge, with a left turn for the road to the lookout. Or you can proceed a bit farther where a clearing affords a view of Lake Tahoe (on a clearer day than today) and follow the ridge cross-country up to Martis Peak proper. The lookout, which is not at the very top of the peak but rather down a bit to the west of the peak, has been restored recently, and is very nice for a sheltered resting point. The door was blocked by a snow drift, but there was access through a window.
A nice time with good company, we are all pooped out, I think.
8.4 mi (3.46 mi uphill, 4.19 mi downhill, 0.49 mi flat)
~1600 ft total ascent – 13.9 % uphill grade, 11.9 % downhill grade
5:42:09 total time (4:08:23 moving, 1:33:46 stopped)
0:30:02 pace (2.0 mph average speed, 11.5 mph max speed)
15.097 difficulty, 25.114 effort
Skiing 04 Mar 2006 11:27 pm
Kyburz Flats
Today was a very good day. 
Kyburz Flats, cross-country ski with M.
Skied from trailhead on Hwy 89 to Wheeler Sheep Camp (Basque Shepherders Oven). Less snow and warmer than expected from the weather reports, decent snow but a couple bare spots on the road in. More water coming down the drainage out of Kyburz Flats Meadow than I’ve ever seen. M. got did fine on his first time on skis, but it aggravated an old foot injury.
Track and Profile
Statistics:
3.92 mi (1.53 mi uphill, 1.95 mi downhill, 0.38 mi flat)
~450 ft climbing – 14.3 % uphill grade, 16.4 % downhill grade
2:39:21 total time (1:59:33 moving, 0:39:48 stopped)
0:30:28 pace (2.0 mph average speed, 7.0 mph max speed)
6.443 difficulty, 10.300 effort