The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

Yep. All on foot. Luckily most of the trail heads are about 10000'. Except Pine Creek. That trail head is only at 7400'. There's a reason it almost always has permits available. lol

 

Teaser pics for a recent "passing through" at the tail end of a trip to DV. Report coming, as always.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

Great preview. What rear bumper is that? Looks like the Badlands I've been wanting more info on. I like that you didn't chop the bed and still increased departure angle.

 

Somehow I must have fallen off of the subscriber list on this thread, so I've just spent some time catching up! With two young boys at home (a 3½ year old and a 9 month old), I haven't had a chance to visit and I've been missing it very much. I did drive down from Oregon via the 395 in September, but smoke and a tight schedule prevented me from enjoying it. Thanks to everyone for the lovely pictures and updates.

I went through some of my older pictures and videos. Here's one from July 2017. When we returned home that weekend we found out that my wife was pregnant with our first son Oliver.

https://youtu.be/Ku0EG2W0QFc

Southern Pacific engine #18 (The Slim Princess). A team of steam engineers and restoration experts had gotten her running after sitting for several decades at Dehy Park in Independence. I understand that she is now leased to the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Colorado for recreational rides.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Pacific_18

 

Thanks! That's a CBI rear bumper, which you can see the install of here: Installing a Dual Swingout CBI Outback Rear Bumper

Other details about the truck, if you're interested: https://adventuretaco.com/2000-tacoma-details/

 

So true.!.!.! But still, it was fantastic… felt like fall! It was beautiful up there! And ya we have been camping and climbing around Bishop And Mammoth area for over a decade. Black sheep is always a great stop and there breakfast burritos!

 

If you've been climbing around here I'd put money on the fact we have passed each other at some point. I'm an equal opportunity climber. Bouldering, trad, alpine, sport are all good. Only thing I don't do is ice. But, I did plenty of that shit when I lived back east. Since moving here when given the choice between climbing in shorts and a t-shirt in February or freezing my balls off I go with choice A. lol

 

Very true! We prob got coffee at black sheep and walked to the gear exchange minutes apart.. lol My wife and I did mostly bouldering at the buttermilks and climbed all over the place. It’s a climbers dream. Now we just camp and explore trails. I do miss the climbing…. I remember climbing the buttermilk’s in January our tent froze to the ground it was miserable….

 

Two years ago I pulled a Subi all the way out Buttermilk Road. We got about a foot of snow. I decided to do a little snow wheeling out Buttermilk Loop. On my way past the cattle gate before the right turn for Birthday Boy Boulder there's a guy with a shovel and a very stuck Subi. He was the only other person out there.

I stopped and asked if he needed a hand. He did. He was so committed to sending Leary/Bard that he stayed when the snow started flying the previous day. Turns out that wasn't the best idea. I winched him out then put a strap to him and pulled him to West Line. After I got done I gave him the beta for Leary/Bard. lol

 

Seeing the radio telescope made me want to post some more pictures, which I hope I don't come to regret, because...

The Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) is currently closed to the public, and public tours are suspended until further notice.

You may not drive onto the site without permission.

(Public tours will hopefully resume next year...)



The 40-meter dish is the largest at OVRO, and was built in 1968 as a prototype for a planned system of (8) identical antennas at the site. However, the NSF (National Science Foundation, the primary funding source for such research in the US) decided to build the VLA in New Mexico instead, a system of more numerous (27) but smaller (25 meter) dishes. That site, as well as the now-sadly-defunct Arecibo dish (also originally NSF funded), are probably the most famous radio telescopes on earth. But although there's only one massive dish at OVRO, it has done a ton of interesting science over the years, and continues to do so to this date. In fact, it has contributed to the field of radio astronomy not only through its direct observations of the heavens, but also by contributing knowledge of large-dish design and performance, and even how they move over the years (settling and plate tectonics).


It's, like, totally big!

The 40-meter antenna has performed observations ranging from around 300 MHz up to around 40 Ghz, and there are efforts underway to instrument it for even lower frequencies. If you ever visit the area, even from the end of the public road, you will still get an excellent view of this massive dish. And if you can sit still for a minute, you will realize that it is actually moving around all the time as it constantly observes the universe above. But it doesn't move that quickly... at full speed, a full azimuthal revolution would take nearly half an hour! Its pointing system uses 21-bit encoders, yielding a precision of 0.6 arcseconds.

The primary contractor for the 40-meter dish was Westinghouse, and as a vintage electronics enthusiast, I absolutely cherish the logo adorning its base:


This is the actually the second-largest dish I've had the pleasure of seeing (from a ground tour of course -- still hoping for a chance to climb around in one someday!) There's an even-larger dish tucked away in California's deserts, but it is used for something else entirely... And that dish is the 70-meter receiver at Goldstone, part of NASA/JPL's Deep Space Communication Network, which communicates with our space probes throughout the solar system:



This is a photo from a visit many years ago. It was an epic experience, but certainly the high point was sitting in the control room when they did their daily check-in with one of the Voyager probes. They are both still transmitting data! But now I'm off-topic again, so let's get back to OVRO...



Also on site are (6) 10-meter dishes for the COMAP ("Carbon Monoxide Mapping Array Pathfinder") project, which is performing spectrography to somehow figure out how stars formed in the early universe. They operate around 30 GHz, and although the science is lost on me, I can at least appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the engineering that went into their design and construction.


There are now six COMAP dishes at OVRO

Another experiment underway is the Deep Synoptic Array, a collection of (110) 15-foot dishes performing interferometry to study fast radio bursts, which are extremely short (millisecond-scale) high-power bursts of radio energy, to quote Wikipedia, caused by some high-energy astrophysical process not yet understood. Unlike the larger dishes on site, these ones aren't moved by motors; instead they scan the skies by virtue of Earth's rotation. The detection circuitry is particularly impressive, achieving a preamp noise level of only 7K, and utilizing RF-over-fiber technology for the interferometry. For the rest of us, that means they did a very good job of designing the system to do good measurements, with what I think is a very modest budget for this type of project.



I have since had the pleasure of chatting with a scientist working on FRB research, while at a recreational astronomy event. Even as a technologist and space enthusiast, I got lost pretty quickly, but the theme of the conversation was neutron stars, with me periodically exclaiming "wow that's crazy!" And it is indeed crazy to ponder how little we know about the universe, yet much we've learned through astronomical observations, and the totally wacky ways scientists and engineers have devised to let us learn so much so quickly.



Another set of dishes at OVRO, also within easy viewing from the public road, are for the C-BASS project, which is searching for bass fisheries in outer space. And this is where I have to draw the line -- bass are terrible eating, and I simply don't get the enthusiasm for bass fishing. Why not search for crappie or trout instead??!? But at the end of the day I have to agree with the C-BASS researchers: I've had literally zero luck fishing the waters of the Owens Valley and the Eastern Sierra -- may as well try fishing in space!

(You can read about the actual scientific intent of C-BASS here.)

There are a few other experiments underway at OVRO, but I didn't get good photos of their instruments, so you'll have to read about them on your own, or perhaps tag along on a public tour if and when they resume. Until then, I hope you've enjoyed my mediocre photos and likely falsehood-ridden discussion of the facility. I especially hope that nobody will become inspired to trespass on the site, which for the record, is not how I obtained these photos.

Edit: I was wrong, the above antennas aren't for the bass fishing project. See Ken's most excellent post below!


Footnote: While it is tempting to criticize the NSF for cancelling and underfunding research projects, especially considering the gut-wrenching collapse of the Arecibo dish last year, readers should realize that primary fault lies not with the NSF, but with our government and elected officials, who have allowed scientific funding to dwindle year after year, at least proportionally to value, for several decades. I'm not saying that Arecibo necessarily should have been saved, but that its collapse very much symbolizes a problematic and deeply alarming decline of US scientific leadership caused by our increasingly shortsighted politics.

The NSF was created in 1950 as part of a novel model of government-sponsored academic research, which was utterly successful and has since been copied around the world. This unprecedented system of government-sponsored fundamental research, coupled with industry-sponsored development and commercialization, allowed the US to dominate global technology development for the remainder of the 20th century.

The American Century has drawn to to a close, and technology development now occurs at an increasingly global scale. This is in part a consequence of the tremendous success of the system we built over half a century ago, including the NSF and the NIH, and our principles of open communication and education. But America's ongoing decline from global technological leadership should also resonate as a call for action as we look toward the future. Now more than ever, we can't afford to stop investing in research.

 

First, I never mind seeing more photos and history. You know that.

And yeah, we saw the closure - they have signs at the entrances as well, which we respected (obviously). Still, the radios are so large as to be easily photographed from outside the gates/fences. I was actually curious about this photo, which seems to have come from the other (north) side of the facility (?), where it appears you can get much closer than we did from the south!

 

Yep, you can skirt around the site on public roads too (to the east). We followed the old RR grade down from the Laws Museum that day, whereupon we stumbled upon that particular shot from the north. That's probably a cropped 240mm shot though, we weren't really that close!


Probably a mile away...

 

We spent a couple days doing a volunteer archaeological dig at Manzanar a while back- took out trailer to stay over while we were there.

Our project was to excavate the orphanage where Japanese-American children were kept who had either lost their parents while at the camp or were moved in from other camps from around the country as it was the only orphanage in the entire system. It’s sad thinking that even children suffered the same treatment as the adults living there. We found lots of marbles, clothing buttons and toys. It was really fun and an interesting way to see how people lived there.

 

It’s good to see the effort being put into telling the stories of the internment camps.

 

I finally visited Manzanar late last month, having driven past it countless times before. Even with so little of the camp remaining, and with only a few minutes to spend there, it was profoundly overwhelming to stand there and contemplate this tragic chapter of American history.

Props to you and other volunteers (and the NPS) for helping to record and preserve the story of what happened there for future generations.

I also just got a chance to visit the remains of a camp in Eastern Europe from that era. Holy hell. It wasn't really that long ago.

 

Great write up! One correction, if I may, the above antennas aren't for C-BASS but are left over BIMA antennas from the CARMA telescope which use to live up on Cedar Flat from about 2005 to 2015. If you drove up to visit the bristlecone pines back then you would have seen them along with all their friends. They are millimeter wave antennas that can operate at much higher frequencies (shorter wavelengths) than the C-BASS antenna which looks like this:

​

Both the BIMA antennas and the C-BASS antenna are about 6m in diameter so similar sized.

CARMA was decommissioned around 2015 and all the antennas brought back down from Cedar Flats and stored at OVRO before at least some of them went to new homes.

Now when the evil penny pinching bastards at NSF cancel something like CARMA always be sure to watch E-Bay because you can score some deals, though shipping costs were a bitch:

​

And then, would you believe it, the slacker UPS driver made no attempt at all to tuck it behind the trash cans to hide it from porch pirates. Worse still he just freaking dumped it in the parking lot resulting in many nastygrams from the HOA:

​

Anyway, to make a long story short, one 55 gallon drum of lemonade and an appeal to the local Amish finally got the thing raised:

​

After all that I'm still only getting freaking two bars with it pointed at the closest tower. AT&T sucks nuts but I'm less than a year into a three year contract. Oh well.

(Credit where credit is due, the first photo is from the C-BASS project page and the last three photos were taken by some of my coworkers).

 

This is fantastic. There is so much along the 395, and no matter how any times I've explored there is always so much more. Super interesting stuff here. Thanks for the rundown. I love to learn about the sights along the 395, and this forum is an awesome resource for adventures to come.

 

This sounds really interesting. Wonder how often they do these digs?

 

I’ve been to Manzanar a few times, but the first was with my daughter about 15 years ago (on a great dad-daughter Eastern Sierra road trip with mountain bikes in our now-gone 80 Series, but that’s another story). We also stopped at the Inyo County historical museum, which was hosting a traveling exhibit about the Stalin-era gulags in Soviet Siberia. Very different, and much worse, but the connection was clear and the choice of hosting this exhibit just a few miles from Manzanar was not a coincidence.

 

Never a dull moment on the 395…