The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

Grandview is more convenient for things like star parties (it's fairly dark skies there) and you can get a group near one another. Technically, it's also "free" but they ask for donations. And honestly, last time I used that bathroom, it'd been a while since the honeypot had been around--so maybe dispersed is a little better

It feels like Barcroft is somebody's pet project and all they do is rent "research spots" out. Last I looked, they warn you about mice and hantavirus...

 

how far toward deadhorse did you get?

 

The envy is all mine - I have a couple open overnite slots for the 26th available, meet me at the truck in the morning.

Love the Mt. Tom report and the included 'Ansel Adams' photos. Looking forward to your next adventure.

 

From the bottom, not far at all. Probably could have gone farther than we did, but with only a front locker (my rear locker is out of commission), tires that look like racing slicks, @mrs.turbodb in the passenger seat, and no second truck, we made it to the third (?) rocky section before backing out and continuing up Wyman (which really becomes tame from about that point to the top).

From the top, there were rock falls to work around and wide trucks would have issues; but man, what a beautiful meadow to drop into.

​

​

​

Tempting! Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, I've got somewhere else (nearby) to be. I'll keep an eye out with the binos for someone at Whitney summit, though!

 

dead horse 2016 crow sqawk echoes big cat skat

 

A number of us have passed by the Owens Valley Radio Observatory and wondered what goes on there. Today, I listened to a Webinar discussing the COMAP project which is one of several projects being conducted at the observatory. The talk was titled "Blurring the Lines: 3D Cosmic Map from Redshift 3 Galaxies". The link takes you to the CalTech project page which describes the project as "an intensity mapping experiment using carbon monoxide (CO) lines to trace the distribution of star forming galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization". There is a radio telescope devoted to the project.

The description is pretty dry but the talk was interesting but now you know a little something about what goes on in Owens Valley

 

If anyone is missing 395 and eastern Sierra scenery, this film seems to have been entirely filmed on location, from Bridgeport to Darwin to Montgomery Pass on Hwy 6. It’s not great cinema … muting the dialog and the fast forward button may be your friends. Vanishing Point it’s not.
https://youtu.be/xCrCCnqFzlk?si=8UNd1uWy-sKzEMSQ

 

Thanks man but it's quicker for me to just look out the window. Which I've been doing a lot of the last 3 days. After 5 years I finally got that COVID thing. lol

 

I got it again last week. No fun.

 

I just assumed everyone that bitched about it was soft. After getting it a have changed that view a bit. lol

 

So you should have plenty of time to watch this. Spoiler alert: it uses Charlie Manson as a plot element. And, it puts Darwin in Nevada. Get well!!

 

Risking a vacation, you should have gotten your 18th booster (LOL). Hope you bounce back quick kid!

 

I was supposed to be 18 miles in over Kearsarge Pass starting 2 days ago. My wife convinced me it wasn't worth it so we canceled the trip. She went to work and I stayed home sick. Feeling much better now and already planning the next big weekend. This was over the 4th at an undisclosed location. Only 12 miles in and completely empty over a holiday weekend. Also, 10500' is a perfect place to be during a heatwave. lol

 

Hot damn, nice catch!

I finally got the dreaded virus last year... spent two days in fever dreams before I was coherent enough to even take the test and figure out what I had. I was convinced me that my bones were improperly assembled, or something like that. Took a few months to get taste back, and sinuses still don't work the same. Not to complain, but hopefully you fared better.

 

Where did the pics go

 

Still there on my comp and phone. Maybe log out then back in?

 

I can still see them, too.

 

Can't see them on my computer in any browser even after clearing the cache and logging in/out but they are there on my phone. Looks awesome!

 

I'm back again with another awesome trip report:
I've been planning this trip for the last 6 months and it was great as always!

This was a small group/offroad trip headed up the 395 to Gold Lake to meet up with some norcal people. My buddy and I had a couple extra days off so we headed out on a Monday and took our time getting up there. We were meeting the rest of the crew ~Bridgeport on Wednsday afternoon. We did a lot of work to get here including an entire suspension upgrade/refresh on my 4Runner and a factory 3rd gen E-Locker install (which I'm glad I did!). This was also my buddies very 1st trip out in his 3rd Gen after building it over the last year or so.

Day One:
We started the trip with a quick stop at Randsburg and Fossil Falls. We didn't stick around long cause it was ~105° and my buddies dog was burning his paws.






When we got to Olancha it was reading 117° so we decided to take a detour to Cerro Gordo ghost Town to get out off the heat and check it out. I've never been there and I've heard great things about it. To start, the road and views were great! Since it was my buddies 1st shake down run things started to rattle off his truck (like his skid plates and switch panel controller) but other than that it was smooth sailing up to the top (or so we thought...)






Well once we got to the ghost town I was less than impressed. Now this is just my 2 cents and I understand it's private property and Brent (the owner) is doing what he can to restore it, but let me rant for a second. For starters 90% of the buildings were off limits and not for safety reasons, but because someone was living in them. The only open buildings were the museum, church, and library. We were immediately greeted by a friendly and somewhat knowledgeable care taker who took us to the museum to sign in and show us around. The museum was cool to wander through but nothing was labeled which made it hard to tell if I was looking at something from 1880 or 1990 and what it's purpose was.

After we finished with the museum we headed to the church. The church was interesting. They're trying to transform it into a movie theater so the beautiful stained glass was half blocked by a crooked projector screen. It also appeared to be junk storage as there was just stuff everywhere.


After that we tried to head to the library but there was a huge trench in the road which I assume is part of the construction for the new hotel. So we gave up on that and instead tried to head over to look at the mine (I figured you weren't allowed inside) but surprisingly we weren't even allowed to look at the building because Brent was editing a video or something in there and I guess he needs miles of space to concentrate or something. We could at least see some old structures and we managed to find a great view but that was about it.




My favorite part was the 2000's pill? bottle mixed into one of their "1800s" exhibits:


Overall the lack of things to look at, limited spaces to explore, new construction going on, and modern vehicles parked everywhere really took away from the ghost town. I'd give it a 2.5/5 and probably won't be back. I commend him for trying but I did not think it was worth the drive.

Anyway back to the trip. We booked it to Bishop to get hardware for my buddies skid plate from Ace before they closed. We rolled in just before they shut the doors and got what we needed. After we were wrapping that up I took a look at his suspension and unfortunately noticed he was missing the upper control arm nut, washer, bushing, inner sleeve, and the bolt was backed nearly completely out of the arm! And of course Ace had just closed it's doors. We hammered the bolt back in place and headed to an auto parts store in hopes of finding something. Since more people were joining us later I asked them get a bushing and sleeve from BTF but we still needed a repair for the next couple days.


Well after multiple auto parts store runs, help from a few locals, and some redneck engineering we were able to find some rubber to work as a bushing, drill out an aluminum sleeve given to us by a construction worker, find a washer that fit, and buy some lug nuts that happened to be the right thread pitch and size! 4 hours later we were back on the road!


We stayed just up the Sherwin Grade and had great weather and awesome star gazing!


Day 2 coming in a bit!

 

The drive up to CG from the east side is a lot of fun. Let's you get some spectacular views driving back down to Darwin, too. I had a similar experience when I was there, with the caveat that everything was locked and nobody was around. I didn't even know there was a museum or a church, much less that awesome stained glass.