Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

The regularly scheduled program

 

And the otherside of that argument is the more the rubber parts flex, the less the metal parts will.


Oh, IMHO, of course.

 

hey too funny... @omegaman2 and i ran in to each other at this exact spot...we must have just missed you by a couple DV minutes

 

He said he saw my truck in Big Pine on Saturday. I was on my way home from DV.

Here's a whole thread dedicated to the crappy Toyota core support:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/core-support-is-tearing-itself-apart.564190/

 

That's a long drive. Did you exit Eureka Valley northbound to Pigeon Springs?

 

about 864 mile loop. no, must have missed that turn off

 

another few days around the park’s west side (4/10 - 4/14). fantastic.
great weather & new moon, however 40 degrees at night with a breeze proved too chilly to capture the stars...next time

 

Sitting here in Twentynine Palms feeling like I should have camped in the desert instead of this, ah, um. "hotel"... Weekend is gonna be awesome! We're basing out of this place and doing some astro in Joshua Tree.

 

At the edge of the Piper Mountain Wilderness Area, Death Valley NP

 

I arrived early and did a little recon. Checked out the high spot, Key Point, and Geology Road-I drove the 4Runner so none of the usual tools-you wanted to air down on this road. Or just floor it. There are more than a few unmaintained roads like this. Speaking of un-marked, Suburbans. Flat top. Un-marked. You've been warned.

I stopped to Desert Bathe. Just kidding. But I did sit for a bit and take in the quiet. There's a lot to be said for that-I noticed a sign that asks the question 'Barren or Beautiful' and at first glance, that's kinda the dilemma of the desert. Sure, DV has the sand dunes and other interesting features but the vast majority of it is rocks and dirt-get down on your knees and the perspective changes.

The workshop is Astro and that means midnight to five am-I am not gonna lie, kinda hard to sleep during the day. Got a few interesting shots but nothing great. Back at it at midnight :rofl

 

Dang I was supposed to be out in Old Dale this weekend with my telescope and my new camera enjoying the night skies and trying to snap the milky way at 2AM. But I got overwhelmed at work, so here I am at work, procrastinating on TW instead...


Anyway the past few pages are starting to make me think I should get an emergency beacon for my (typically solo) back-country camping adventures. I had a garmin for a while but I gave it to someone who needed it more than I did after getting irate about their billing practices. So here's my current emergency backup SOS com plan: I program my message into my little APRS radio, then hang it from my flying camera and fly it to a thousand feet or two AGL. Even though the radio is only 1W, it can hit digipeaters over 100 miles out. And my wife/family know how to track it and check for messages. Definitely, a EPIRB would be better in virtually every way, except perhaps that I'd be unlikely to activate it until I was near death. For now the flying APRS radio seems like a reasonable fairweather solution for SOS messaging, and it's a lot easier spending money on things that have fun uses outside of dire emergencies.



Also I wanted to report back on a question I asked here last month (and thank to @turbodb @Stuck Sucks and @dman100 for providing reports): The Afton crossing on Mojave Trail was still filled with rocks as of 3/27:


(I don't know who this is, just one of the dozens of vehicles crossing the river that morning.)

The Mojave Road was packed with traffic that weekend! I've never seen so many vehicles in those parts of the desert. Here was the parking situation at Spooky Canyon on Saturday:



Heck there even seemed to be more trains than usual!



But luckily I didn't see any illegal vehicles in the preserve, just a lot of friendly off road camping folks like me. I wonder if this insane surge in back-country traffic will sustain itself after the pandemic craziness dies down. We had a rough time finding anywhere to camp even 2-3 hours before sunset each night! But the crowding worked to my advantage when I shredded yet another tire on a narrow shelf side-trail near the lava flows. I was still staring at the deflated tire in disbelieve when a guy named Chris rounded the corner in a built Tundra and essentially changed the tire for me. As in, he had an impact wrench and a bottle jack in his hand before I could even devise a plan to get to my hi-lift out from beneath our camping gear. I was on my way in no time, as was he.



Those lava rocks sure are sharp! I have no idea what I did to kill the tire this time... no sharp outcoppings, distracted driving, or obvious missteps to blame. Just inching down a bumpy road when PFFFFFFfffffsssssssssss. So I'll attribute this to random bad luck I guess.







I took it easier for the rest of the trip owing to the lack of a spare, but still had a great time out in the desert. Hope you guys don't mind yet another post that's not actually about Death Valley!

 

have always enjoyed the drive thru here...wishing to stop and linger

 

Only recently discovered that area. Pretty cool to see the dunes from that vantage point

 

.everything stinks of retro. 1961 nippon kogaku 2.8CM f3.5 lens. 1969 nikon F. retro400s expired. rodinal. rodent infested mine shack.

 

Finished a 6 day trip across Death Valley last week.
Rough itinerary:
1. Eureka Dunes
2. Steel Canyon
3. Lippincott Pass
4. Racetrack
5. Hidden Valley (crazy silt)
6. Hunter Mountain
7. Titus Canyon
8. Rogers Peak
9. Furnace Creek for refuel
10. Striped Butte and Ranch (didn't make it)

Last day we ran into a mysterious suspension clunk in the canyon to Striped Butte. We found an impromptu camp site off of Warm Springs Road and could not diagnose so we headed out next day. I feel like we did fairly well for the time we had.

Steel Canyon was in good condition. Looks like the park has tried to fortify some of the obstacles in the canyon to keep them from deteriorating too much. Fun to get buzzed by the F18s driving into the Saline Valley.

Lippincott was rougher than I expected and more exposed. Slightly off camber in spots with a little exposure. Some corners have increasing wash outs, pick your line wisely or you will drop a tire.

Pictures:




Edit: Hunter Mountain was freshly graded as well as Skidoo ... sad face.

 

so jealous man. how was lippincott?

 

Great photos. The red always looks sooo good when it has dirt.

 

Lippincott was great. We even found a sign that said "Death Valley National Monument". You climb and climb then at the top your almost right at the racetrack. We did a lot of this backwards from what the internet says, had we done this the way most do we would have been going down Steel Canyon and down Lippincott. If we were doing these on a weekend I would not have run them the way I did as there is very little room to pass. During the week we saw one van bail at the entrance to Steel Canyon and 0 people on Lippincott.

 

You saw the National Monument sign, huh? Last time I was through there, it wasn't there. I wonder if it'd fallen over and NPS has fixed/replaced it. Very glad to hear that it's back, whatever the reason.