mk5 adventures

Glad you took a sick day (meant that in a good way ) and decided to post up your travels. The PNW has some really pretty bridges. Looking forward to the next chapter with your Dad.

Want to share your Milky Way picture secrets?

 

Here's the recipe:

1. Tripod
2. Full frame mirrorless camera with big pixels (low megapixel count)
3. A fast wide-angle lens, in my case a 12mm/2.8, always wide open
4. ISO 2000 to 5000 depending on ambient light
5. 30-second exposures
6. Growing sense of delusional optimism
7. Dammit, you idiot, you bumped it out of focus again
8. Forget to set ISO back to auto for the rest of the trip, ruining the rest of your daylight shots as well

But in seriousness most of my shots are total garbage, so I take tons and tons of them, and a low single-digit percentage of them wind up salvageable.

And with that in mind, I present the following series of barely-salvageable garbage:

2022 Edwards Air Show



















Of course I was in the parking lot for the raptor flight... Fucking metal detectors. A pocket knife is a tool not a weapon. How the fuck else am I supposed to injure myself trying to open a bag of fruit snacks?





So beefy



And I missed the bone too... sigh





But damn it was a great show. With sonic freakin' booms. And this crazy guy:





And these:



It was an epic show.









Never imagined I'd get to drive out on Rogers Lake... although the gentlemen with the rifles made a pretty compelling case against driving out to the tower.



I found some cool petroglyphs on the way out:





But damn, I gotta clean that camera!

 

Let’s see,
Tripod- check
Full frame mirrorless- sorta check, APS-C mirrorless
12mm/2.8- check

I guess I need to work on the rest of the list. I should probably also get more familiar with my camera before I fumble around in the dark with it trying to do astro shots

 

When I was up at the tram station last year, the guy that startled me wound up taking some pretty epic shots with an APS-C camera. No need for a full frame -- that's just the camera I happen to have. Doesn't have to be mirrorless for that matter. Of his friends even took some amazing shots with the latest Samsung cellphone too! All with long exposures on tripods of course.

I think I forgot the most critical part of the recipe though. You need really dark clear skies. No moon, well after sunset, and very far from civilization. Probably a lot easer in the west vs. out east, but a good rule of thumb is to see where there's an observatory or where astronomy groups gather. In any case, if a 30 second exposure at f/2.8 doesn't make you say "wow" then you probably just need darker skies.

Also, I think I read that the summer season is best for milky way, that way the most spectacular part of the galaxy is overhead at night. But it's a pretty big galaxy, I'm sure there's something to see in the winter too. You'd just need even darker skies to make it pop.

 

That Rob Holland aerobatic flight was one for the record books. The reason he is a 11 time award winner was definitely evident during that demo, I was in awe. I was lucky enough to be directly behind his plane when he climbed in and fired up for the Edwards air show.

 

It's one thing to watch a billion-dollar warplane relentlessly batter the laws of physics into submission through sheer soul-jarring violence. I mean it's utterly amazing.

But this guy straight up figured out the cheat codes. No other way to explain it.

https://youtu.be/DiRC84u24XY

I shot a lot more footage but it turned out to be non-stop f-bombs with the camera pointed at my feet.

https://youtu.be/x2PkumQzjPY

I don't know what to say. This is not how airplanes work. That's not how any of this works.

Description: This video shows a guy driving his airplane straight up into the sky, part of the 2022 Edwards Airshow. Pulls up like someone owes him money up there, slows down, then just parks it in the middle of the god-damned sky. Planes don't have backup lights, but if his did, youd've just seen them blink white because this dude just shifted gravity from overdrive back up to park. He looks around but I guess the dude he was looking for isn't home... twirls his plane around a few more times just to check around. And the whole time he's holding a perfect hover like some kind of special-ops helicopter. But no joke, he's not in a helicopter, he's in a regular-ass airplane facing straight up in the sky. I don't know if these tiny planes have shitters, but if his does, he just shit all over laws of physics there. And then he flips a u-turn tighter than a smart car, and drives his plane straight back down to earth just the way he came up. The whole thing is so mind-blowing that we need his plane to leave smoke trails so we can process what's happening.

 

@dman100 Y'all got me out here in the middle of nowhere planting Joshua trees...

 

Say hi to Drew for me. Unfortunately this time didn’t work for me. Hopefully there’s more opportunities in Spring.

 

Nice…
It was depressing to drive thru the burn area a couple weeks ago

 

Yeah it'll take a while to recover! The seedlings being planted look like blades of grass.

Nice shot by the way.

They said they plan to run the program for 4 years. And dang, a whole day's work just to plant a handful of them. But it sure does feel rewarding. Thanks for the heads up!

Some shots from camp, procrastinating doing the dishes here...



Not a bad spot!



This hot sauce is the best:



Moonlit view of cima dome... burn scar plain as day:

 

So as part of the planting process, you get to name each tree within the reporting app. We started with clever and funny names, then some sentimental ones, and as day two drew to close, I came up with another naming scheme: Everyone who had liked the above post as of that morning--when I last had cell service. So sorry @AMMO461 -- maybe I'll get you next time.

I hereby present the following additions to the Cima Dome Joshua Tree forest:

First of course is @dman100 who brought this whole opportunity to my attention -- thanks again!


Then @turbodb :


Next up is @jubei :


And finally @omegaman2 :



It turned out that I didn't bring the right shoes, so I had to bow out with blistered feet on the third and final day of my planned time at Cima Dome. (I'm hoping to make it up for another day before the planting is done... we'll see!) So instead, I took a driving tour through the New Yorks, looping down to Route 66 towards home, to whet my appetite for a planned tour of the Eastern Mojave--as motivated by some recently purchased guide books--hopefully early next year (?). I fully intend to post a more thorough narrative of the day's adventure "someday," but here are some teaser shots to spoil the novelty of any such future report, and to undermine my already dwindling motivation to ever follow through on that ambition.


Hiking out from the planting site on day two... many times longer than any of the prior day's treks.

...

...

...

Actually.. fuck it, I'ma type out the whole spiel right now. Don't worry, I'm still working to on the currently half-posted CO/UT trip report, as well as a dozen others preceding it. You know... "someday."

But for now, let's rewind to Saturday morning, which found me racing up the 15 towards Cima Dome as dawn unfolded, excited for my first day of planting Joshua Trees.

Trip Report: Cima Dome Joshua Tree Planting Extravaganza 2022


Enjoying the sunrise en route...

I had no idea what to expect on this trip. I knew I was excited about planting Joshua Trees, but that's about it. Luckily, the NPS staff explained the process to us in great detail, and soon I was lugging buckets of seedlings and bags of water across the burn-scarred Mojave, enjoying the company of like-minded people on a beautiful and pleasant day.



The park staff had set up event headquarters at the old ranch high on Cima Dome's north face. The main house and several structures there had been saved from the fire, but much had been lost, including the site's water and power infrastructure, as well as whatever structure had stood at the above photographed location. The bright red "facilities" had been brought in for the volunteer event, I saw some at the designated 2WD camping areas too. Good thinking, NPS!



The solar modules hadn't combusted, but the heat had destroyed the front glass. The encapsulant and backsheet keep them from falling apart, but their days of making electricity are over.


Looks like we aren't taking the bike, guys.



Here's a typical site for a transplanted seedling... protected by a rabbit fence and the partial shade of a "nurse" plant -- in this case a deceased cholla cactus -- and surrounded by a berm of dirt that will funnel today's dose of water towards the transplant's growing root system, and hopefully prevent the undermining of the rodent fence for months or years to come. Also present is an ID tag, which will help the land managers track the success of our efforts, and hopefully help identify the more successful strategies for future reforestation efforts in this unique climate. We enter the tag number in addition to other relevant details into an app, which also records the GPS location of each transplant. All transported materials except for the plants themselves will be removed within two years -- apparently necessitated by this region's designation as a federal wilderness area.


Future majestic Joshua tree... hopefully!


Previously majestic Joshua Tree... oof!

Unlike the typically frustrating wilderness designations of DVNP, where so many otherwise interesting hikes begin at a road closure, forcing miles of pointlessly trudging along perfectly graded mining roads to reach a would-be parking area for the should-be trailhead, enjoying such pristine wilderness scenery as shot-up appliances and massive tailings piles on the way... well, the Cima Dome wilderness area seems quite true to character. Other than our footsteps and the contrails of jetliners far above, it was hard to see a single mark of human activity for much of the days. Some old roadbeds still stand out on satellite maps, but are scarcely detectable at ground level thanks to the grass cover, and will soon be lost forever as the charred husks of this dead forest topple and decay.


(checks bird guide) Look, a Cardinal!

On the first day of planting, we knocked out our original assignment of two sites (12 plants) by lunch time, so we doubled back to HQ to pick up a third site (+6 plants) for the afternoon. Sadly, on the way to the third site, a Mojave rattler made a suicidal dive beneath the rear tires of the leading vehicle.



I suspect the serpent had been mortally wounded, and we were all bummed about that, but we gave it plenty of clearance as we paused to admire its beauty--it was still quite capable of striking in revenge, and it would be hard to blame the thing if it did. For the record, the lead driver had definitely been driving slowly and carefully, and had already demonstrated a better eye for wildlife than any of us. Even the best-intended restoration efforts are bound to inflict some cost to the environment.







Well, even with our afternoon bonus mission, we wrapped up with a good two hours of sunlight remaining. So after saying my goodbyes to that day's team, I looped my way around the south end of Cima Dome on the powerline road towards the lava fields to our west, with the eventual plan of finding a good camping spot.





But first, I figured I had time to revisit the lava tube. I've been there several times before, and although it's always a great experience, it's always been crowded, and more often than not, plagued by instagrammers bogarting the sun beams. I was hoping that the recent flooding and road closures might give me a shot at having the whole place to myself, even though the late hour of the day meant there would be no instagrammable sunbeams within the subterranean atrium.



And sure enough, I did have the place to myself! It was pretty great. I hoped this luck would hold as I doubled back toward Cima Dome in search of a camp site. To my modest surprise, I found a bunch of campers had already claimed the upper reaches of Aiken mine, and someone had set up at the ranch site to the northeast as well. So, as the sun settled towards the horizon, I decided to push northward to one of the other cinder mines.


(checks bird guide) Look, a Goldfinch!

The direct route I had chosen turned out to be by far the most challenging road I've yet encountered in the preserve. I had aired down early in the day for comfort -- now it was needed for traction -- and even then, I drove super-duper slow, owing to my embarrassingly terrible track record of popping tires on the lava terrain out here. The slow traverse cost me much of the sunset for photography, but it got me there with the tires intact, and there was just enough sunlight to still have some fun with the camera.



And I was rewarded with my choice of any site I desired to make camp. So obviously, I chose the best:



The remaining sunset turned out to be a nice one... punctuated by the rising nearly full moon.



Now the photo below wouldn't have made the cut, if not for an odd blip of color I noticed near the moon when I was reviewing them back at home:



Let's look a bit closer:

Enhance!

Looks like I unknowingly caught a plane up there. Wish I had known at the time... might have made a neat photo if I'd have zoomed in.


Enhance!

Instead we get these blurry easter eggs hiding in a pair wide-angle exposures... but hey, I'm not complaining!





The night's entrée might seem a bit out of place, as I don't think the high Mojave is known for its fishing. Actually I'm not sure, but either way, this guy was leftover from my Colorado trip, where -- spoiler alert -- I had an epic time fishing, and I came home both well-fed and with my bag-limit of trout frozen in the cooler. Wild trout still hasn't caught on with the wife, so it's been my go-to solo camping meal ever since. Plus I have to say... the irony of enjoying this cuisine out in the barren desert added a new dimension to its flavor. Or maybe it was the hot sauce, hard to say. Either way: Yum!



With the moon high and bright there was little of interest for night photography, so I decided to call it a night after a single exposure.



The second day proceeded much like the first, except that we hiked much deeper into the wilderness area to hit our targets... looks like about 6 miles that day. Even though a cache site about two miles in meant we didn't have to lug water for most of the trek, I still wound up with pretty sore feet. Wish I knew where I put my damn hiking boots... could have used them here.





By the time we got back to HQ, the sun was already low in the sky -- a result of that morning's clock change of course.



Unlike the stupid sun, the moon actually doesn't practice daylight savings, so it rose around the same time as the day before.



I'm sick and tired of the daylight savings time debate, why can't we agree to get rid of this inane time change once and for all? Let's start by fixing God's stupid mistake and tipping Earth into alignment with the ecliptic. Fuck summer and freezing-ass winter--it can be spring or fall year-round! I'll even let you pick which one--so long as you'll agree we should also slow Earth's rotation down to maybe 30 hours a day, so I can finally get some goddamn sleep.


Looking north towards what I believe they were calling Rock Tank--one of the designated 2WD camping areas for the volunteer event. That's actually where I camped with my old man earlier this year on the way to Utah.


Gotta love sunset... even the mediocre shots turn out great!



Well it was getting to be supper time, and I was fresh out of fresh fish. But hey, this was a camping trip, and sometimes you just have to rough it when you're out in the back country.



So naturally... I drove to the Venetian and ordered a medium-rare steak.


The ultimate back-country camping destination

The steak was great, but it's actually not why I drove to a fancy-pants casino instead of just parking out in the desert and eating a whole bag of Doritos for dinner. My wife has the social medias on her cellular telephone, and she saw there that my sister was in Vegas with her husband that weekend... he was attending some sort of computer conference or something. I hadn't seen them in quite some time, and Vegas was only an hour away for me... so she called me... I called them... and soon enough we were meeting up in the hotel lobby.



Fun fact: They don't let you park at the Venetian with propane tanks and jerry cans in your truck bed. There's literally a security inspection on the way in.

 

@mk5 ,
As long as you keep enjoying and posting your beautiful outdoor excursions, ALL is forgiven my friend. I hope to cross paths with you someday in the great expanse we love to explore. We were in Alabama Hills across from Mt Whitney this past weekend.

 

Cima Dome Joshua Tree Extravaganza-thon: Part 2

Dang, I'm just no good at picking titles for these posts, because by this point of the story I was eating steak at a Vegas casino, and would neither return to Cima Dome nor plant any more trees for the rest of the trip!

I politely declined my sister's invitation to join them at Cirque du Soleil, citing exhaustion from a day of physical labor, then said no-thanks their generous and tempting offer to crash at their suite upstairs. I did at least ferry them down the strip to the show's venue before skipping town, admiring the vast concentration of immense and extravagant hotels on my way out, smugly content in my plan go sleep in a van down by the river.

https://youtu.be/oIKU7GKn7Ps

Well technically I slept in a truck down by the railroad tracks. But van down by the river is the better punchline.

My intended destination for that night was originally going to be a bit further up in the mountains, but I had trouble finding it right away, and wasn't super motivated anyway because the moonlight precluded favorable photography conditions. I thought the rail line might yield a more suitable yet enjoyably challenging photography subject for the moonlight: a train in motion. And it did, but literally only once. The line was otherwise dead... perhaps not surprising for a Sunday night.


Here's where I gave up on finding the night's original destination... actually this was earlier that evening, as a detour on the way to Vegas--but don't tell my sister, because it made me late for dinner. The trail looked fun, but proved too sketchy to rush through with tires already aired-up for the freeway. Gave up at the above washout on a ~40-degree upslope. Plus... I was getting seriously hungry by then.



As the night's first and only train lumbered off into the distance, I quickly scrambled down to the tracks to see if I could make use of the glowing red block signals, knowing they would soon go dark again. I only managed a single exposure before they were extinguished, and didn't quite achieve the effect I was hoping for, but hey, it's what I got, so it's what I posted.


This one is horrendously overprocessed ... but I like that the luxor beam popped out to the right.

I dozed in and out for a while, wondering if another train might come by. I had really underestimated that first train's speed, and although through blind luck I had nailed the exposure settings, my timelapse had failed to capture the smooth motion effect I was seeking.


A still from the video... in hindsight I wish I had shot it at twice or quadruple the frame rate.

The next train came through just as pre-dawn glow began to outshine the setting moon. And wow, if you want to go from deep sleep to being maximally awake in world-record time... just park just a few feet from a major freight rail line, along a climbing grade near a road crossing, then doze off in a comfy sleeping bag with the windows cracked. The roar of four freight locomotives approaching at full throttle builds just slowly enough to filter into your subconscious without jarring you awake. But even with senses numbed by slumber, the subconscious mind eventually struggles to adapt as the rumbling grows to chest-shaking intensity... the dream sequence begins to falter beneath the overflowing unprocessed sensory alarm. The eyelids snap open and blink, the eyes roll forward, the pupils seek focus... the conscious mind begins a frantic search to orient itself to reality. And, if you've parked yourself just right, this is the exact moment when the train blows its horn for that grade crossing. So just as your eyes converge on the image of a speeding locomotive now filling your entire windshield, the piercing blast of that horn triggers a reflexive dump of adrenaline before your mind can interject its voice of reason. Of course it's a train. You like trains. You parked next to train tracks because you like trains. But damn, you sure are awake now!



So... I got an early start to the day. Across the dimly lit valley I noticed a bizarre streak of piercingly brilliant light. It utterly dwarfed the flickering lights of distant freeway headlamps, street lights, and various outposts of industry, which had shimmered prominently throughout the night before.


Eventually daylight started filling in above...

This was indeed no manmade light. It was the approaching daylight, concealed from my view by the mountain range behind me, but reflected to my eyes from the massive heliostats of the distant solar thermal plants across the valley. I happened to be parked in nearly perfect alignment between them and the soon-to-rise sun. In absolute terms, this probably wasn't very bright. But in perceptual terms, knowing how far away and how large this facility is, and absent any other hint of the approaching daylight from the horizon in any direction, I have to say: This is the most inconceivable, preposterously bright thing I've ever perceived.


Pretty sure there's a UFO in that cloud

The solar thermal plant is of course the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, one of the most notable landmarks of the I-15 drive between LA and Vegas. The valley before me is the Ivanpah Valley. Midway between me and the solar plant is the long-gone townsite of Ivanpah--the northern terminus of the Nevada Southern Railroad (NSR) whose route I'll be exploring today. And the concrete platform on which I'm parked is one of the few remnants of the townsite once known as Leastalk, later known as--you guessed it, Ivanpah--as the townsite of the same name to the north ceased to exist. Today, aside from these railside platforms and a set of modern mailboxes (?!?) at the turnoff to the site, there is little hint that the town of Ivanpah ever existed here. And there's absolutely no trace of the other Ivanpah to the north, nor the rail grade that served it--at least not from ground level--I had looked for it last night on my way to Vegas.

Let's go ahead and take a look at a map, here's one from 1912, with a few added notations by yours truly. I'm parked at the site circled in red:



I'm here to explore the old NSR grade from here to Goffs to the south. Along the way is the Vanderbilt mining district, which was actually one of the most prominent and productive gold districts of San Bernardino county, supporting a peak population of 400 in its glory days. Wikipedia suggests the area had died out by 1895, but other sources (including this one) tell a story of intermittent but significant efforts which continued until CDPA killed off mining for good in the 1990s.


Departing the county road, the rail grade immediately enters a prominent cut, through which we can already see our first destination...

Our tour begins not far from Ivanpah at the ruins of Vanderbilt's final chapter: the Goldome Mill. There are plenty of creative ways to reach it, some of which I had abortively explored last evening, but it's an easy shot off the county road via the NSR grade--the first drivable portion remaining today. Arriving long before the sun had poked out above the mountains, I gleefully set out with my camera. Of course the early-morning shade ensured near-universal disappointment with the results, but I was able to triage many of them in photoshop to fill your browser's memory--so if that was your goal, you're welcome. If you were hoping for good photos or a concise story, well, you must be lost, because this is the bottom of page 7.


Thanks to all-steel construction, this is perhaps the least-sketchy mill structure I've ever climbed



The Goldome Mill is easily the most-modern and best-preserved gold mill I've ever encountered, owing to its comparatively recent construction (I believe mostly in the 70s), its composition of mostly steel rather than wood, and its recent abandonment in the mid-90s. I've been exploring abandoned mining stuff for almost 20 years, and have never seen anything quite like it!



As recently as five years ago, this site was kind of a gem of the Mojave--at least in terms of hosting unique and unperturbed mining relics--I'd argue it was ripe for preservation as an interpretative site if not a museum to showcase both the technology and the perils of modern medium-scale mining operations. That would be no easy feat however, as it is also a superfund site riddled with mismanaged toxic materials, but the potential was there. I've also read online that it's slated for demolition and site restoration to natural state, so who knows what future might await it. But unfortunately, one future that's recently been ruled out is its proper preservation as a historical mining site.

And that's because of a group of narcist douchebags known as "indecline."



Indecline claims to be an "art collective," and cite as motivation the alarming social and environmental injustices facing humanity today.

I get it. Nobody likes injustice. Some people are compelled to effect positive change through activism, voting, charitable contributions, volunteering, or anything else we can do to help solve these problems.

But other people make things worse, they burn and loot, or shamelessly exploit the cause for profit and self-promotion. Indecline exemplifies the latter category. I'm not saying I disagree with their cause, or that all of their projects are bullshit either. But this one is, and for that, they can go fuck themselves.



Apparently, Indecline got their start by giving us Bumfights. Today, they promote vandalism on social media and peddle t-shirts online. No, they're not a non-profit; their merch sales fund their lifestyle and increasingly elaborate vandalism projects, rather than benefiting even slightly any of the social or environmental causes they claim as inspiration.



Mojave National Preserve is a frequent target for indecline's vandalism, and Goldome is definitely the worst I've yet encountered. I had read online that the site was vandalized, and saw thumbnails on Google Maps, leading me to expect some large-scale spraypainted mural work at the site.



But this is no rattlecan street art. Nope, these fuckheads literally swiss-cheesed the place with a plasma cutter. Apparently it took a whole week of work... and required them to bring in a boom lift and generator, in addition to all the other materials and equipment for a project of this scale. So we can estimate the effort as hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars. And rather than put that towards actually cleaning up this toxic abandoned site, or towards disrupting ongoing environmental destruction at actual active mine, or helping solve any injustice in even the slightest tangible way... well, indecline cut gigantic holes in buildings and tanks housing toxic materials at an abandoned superfund site in a National Preserve. Then they promoted it on social media while peddling $50 hoodies online.



They did a piss-poor job at Goldome too... most of the corrugated sheetmetal images are indiscernible today, because they didn't properly support the intricate patterns to survive beyond their instagram shoot. The site is littered with fallen pieces of the tattered metal. Hope your tetanus is up to date.


The fuck is this supposed to be?



But what pisses me off the most is that that this shortsighted act of self-gratification has now opened the floodgates for rampant looting, vandalism, and arson at Goldome. A blog post from 2017, prior to indecline's vandalism, stated:

"The industrial machinery is rusting but modern, a lot of glass is broken but many windows are still intact, and the entire place has an uncomfortable silence draped over it... There are some signs of vandalism, but not much more than some graffiti and definitely not as much as one would expect for somewhere that has been abandoned for twenty years."

Today, not a single pane of glass survives, spraypaint covers anything within reach, and damn-near everything combustible has been burned. Here's a photo by @turbodb from his 2019 trip to Goldome, not too long after indecline did their deed:



On the right is the mill's control room; internet searching suggests there was an elaborate control panel at mezzanine level, with the main electrical panels at ground level below. I would love to see that... but note what else is shown in the photo: Uh-oh... wood paneling.



Yep, completely burned now. (Dan's photo was presumably taken from behind the yellow guardrail to the right, for perspective.)



Pretty remarkable the roof held up... although the fire definitely left its mark. This place is well built. Whoever described it as "structurally unstable" in the EPA reports clearly hasn't been here in person.



Well by this point, sunlight was starting to filter into the building, and its rays brought to my attention the alarming quantity of dust and ash I was kicking up and breathing... probably not the best idea to shuffle around at recently burned-out superfund site I guess. I decided to hit the road... just after I took a "few more" photos of course...


An elaborate series of conveyors, crushers, and graders led to the main mill building... I believe the above grate is where ore was first delivered to the plant, presumably via truck.


At the high-point of the outdoor conveyer system...


The outdoor conveyer system ends at this pivoting elevator... perhaps for sorting purposes?


This underground segment tunnels beneath the outdoor conveyer system, where a few gates allow material to drop from the sorting operations above. It leads across an enclosed bridge and into the mill building


The ball mill seems to be the first destination for ore reaching the main facility


Then various stages of chemical processing... huge outdoor tanks, settling ponds, and remnants of extensive plumbing suggests a complex process was used


The laboratory building


The above-ground swimming pool


Here, during a 2008 EPA-commissioned site visit, "chemicals (muriatic acid, sodium hydroxide) and other materials were found that appeared to be part of a clandestine methamphetamine laboratory."

We'll conclude our Goldome tour with this art collection depicting the artist collective known as indecline:


A bunch of useless dicks

Moving on up the line, I worked my way through the Vanderbilt mining district, crisscrossing and often retracing my way so as to explore both the rail grade and the network of roads in various states of decay. Vanderbilt was actually one of the largest and most productive gold districts in San Bernardino County (nope, not Calico -- could have fooled me though.)


Somewhat surprisingly, the best-preserved house is a wooden one atop a hill... the dozens of rock-walled dwellings I saw were in far worse states of decay.


Most of the shafts were sealed, leading to the ironic situation here, where I'm standing directly above one rather than keeping a safe distance. My little flashlight is doing its best to illuminate what's below.


Tread lightly



The NSR grade features countless substantial cuts and fills as it works its way through the New Yorks. Although the bridges are long-gone and the fills are beginning to wash out in places, as of 2022, bypasses allow you to drive essentially its entire length from Goldome, through Vanderbilt, and back to the county road near what my map calls "Bathtub Spring." This is easily the most interesting stretch of drivable, unmaintained, abandoned rail grade I've found in California to date.


One of the bypasses. The drive isn't challenging, unless you're worried about pinstriping.


A century of erosion and washouts have taken their toll since the line was abandoned, but the substantial engineering invested during its construction, such as this stone culvert, have kept vast swaths drivable today.



Unfortunately I don't expect the rail grade to remain drivable for much longer, as the cuts are slowly filling shut, and erosion has worn fills to perilously narrow width at a few locations. It appears virtually untraveled today and is quite overgrown; with continued disuse, the route seems at risk of closure as well.

So for all these reasons, I highly recommend you check it out while you still can!

Here's a view from atop one of the Vanderbilt mines, looking back towards Ivanpah valley:



I hope this one conveys the dramatic elevation change the NSR had to descend to reach the valley below. Conveniently, a freight train shows us the location of the UP line, which the NSR met at Ivanpah. Based on what I'd seen today, I might have guessed that the NSR was built up from the transcontinental UP line at Ivanpah below, initially to serve the countless gold mines of burgeoning Vanderbilt, then up and over the mountains to reach Searchlight, and eventually connected south to Goffs to gain access to SoCal's other transcontinental route, the Santa Fe.

But that's pretty much the opposite of what actually happened. Vanderbilt's boom came and went long before the rails arrived. The NSR was actually built northwards from Goffs starting in '93, from the Santa Fe line (then the only transcontinental route in SoCal, constructed some 10 years prior), reaching only the smaller but then-active community of Manvel, later named Barnwell, at the foot of the New Yorks' eastern slope. Like all railroads of the era, the line promptly went bankrupt, then changed its name (re-emerging as the California Eastern, but we'll go ahead and keep calling it the Nevada Southern here). The rails were later pushed through the mountain range, not so much to serve what remained of Vanderbilt, but to carry ore from other mines on the far side of Ivanpah valley. In fact the primary customer seems to have been the Copper World mine on the far side of Mountain Pass. After falling under the ownership of the Santa Fe, a final branch was built to Searchlight from Barnwell. A few years later, the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad completed SoCal's second transcontinental route via Las Vegas (and Ivanpah below us), with support of the Union Pacific who eventually became its sole owner and operator, as remains the case today.



That gets us to the situation depicted on the map--reposted for your convince--pretty much the peak era of railroading in the Mojave. Not long after that map was printed, the Ivanpah branch was abandoned, as it couldn't compete with the UP line now directly serving the valley. Within another decade, the entire NSR had been pruned from existence. Roadways took over much of its route through the valleys, leaving little trace of the railroad today, save for the remarkable grade through the New Yorks, occasional historical markers, and some facilities preserved at Goffs. And having explored the first of these remains, we'll go ahead and check out the rest on our way home.


Not much to see at Barnwell



A historical marker has been established at the route's crossing of the Mojave Road.



One of the more prominent remaining outposts of the Mojave's ranching era lies along the route as well:



Finally we reach Goffs and its museum...



... which is ...



... god dammit, it's fucking closed today! I had been looking to visiting its many exhibits--this one in particular:



Well shit. (Not here obviously.) Oh well, that left me with more time to explore other places, and I already knew what was at the top of my list -- you guessed it, an abandoned mine. We came so close to this one earlier this year visiting the caverns, but I had the truck taken apart, and the wife's car wasn't up for the rocky trail leading to this place.



It was even larger than I had expected. Another gem of the preserve!

Wow, it turns out there's a limit to how many photos you can put in a single post here on TW, and I just hit it. Want to guess how many that is?

 

50. The photo limit is 50. Achievement unlocked.

If you've read this far you deserve a trophy. But I'm fresh out of trophies, so here's a bunch more photos and long-winded ranting.



This one is huge. I turned back with sore feet before finding the end or chickening out like usual.



Almost big enough to drive in as well.



But not quite.

I don't know if you can tell from the photos, but this bore is relatively steeply sloped, proceeding downwards from the box cut, which I believe makes it a decline.

That's right, I read stuff on Wikipedia, then throw around esoteric terminology in hopes of appearing to be knowledgeable. It's is pretty much a cornerstone of my career at this point. Another such cornerstone is fixating on nuances. To that end, let's double-check our terminology here: I am currently "in a decline," which is awesome, because I love exploring old mines and taking pictures of them, and hope for future generations to be able to explore them too. I wouldn't want to be "in decline," though, because that would mean things were getting worse for me. But no matter what my future holds, thank God I'm not "indecline," which is a bunch of self-serving narcissist douchebags who vandalize public property for commercial gain. There, glad we cleared that up!



An equally ginormous shaft was driven from a higher level. No grate or safety rail here... I didn't dare get close enough for a proper look in. Even then, with no idea as to the extent of the mine workings below, I made a somewhat rare "I'm doing something stupid and risky" check-in with the wife. Not believing for a moment that the fall could be survived if the ground gave way beneath me up here, but knowing the search would be made easier with knowledge of where, precisely, my life of occasionally poor decision-making had ended. That said, it wasn't really that sketchy, and I've made far-worse decisions. But usually she's in the car with me for those.




No end in sight...




Not much remains of the above-ground workings here, but this place clearly had substantial operations when it was active.



There's an absolutely massive tailings pile, with no hint as to what formed it.



I'm assuming there must have been an elevator conveyor at some point.

Speaking of other mysteries... I saw occasional bits of yellow and red material like this:


Any ideas what this is?

And for that matter, what killed this poor cactus?



Perhaps we'll never know. But one thing I did know: it was probably time to start heading home.



The ruins of several houses, some quite expansive, dotted the road descending from the mine. The dugout above is the only to retain a roof, if you want to call it that. The views didn't suck either.



When I got back to the freeway, I was disappointed to find the road southward to Route 66 closed. The summer's flooding had apparently washed out many segments of that route. I pressed west to the Amboy turnoff and headed south there, ignoring the various signage warning that my intended route was still closed -- at least there were no barriers here, and I could already see the clouds setting up for a potentially spectacular sunset for the valley surrounding my destination.



This turned out to be the case--the skies were epic. And hanging out at Roy's gave no shortage of subjects for photography. Oh, plus gas. I needed gas too!



Believe it or not, even at this struggling independently-owned vintage gas station, in the middle of nowhere on a long-bypassed and forgotten stretch of Route 66, which itself had been closed for months by washouts in both directions... Roy's was charging less for gas then the Chevron on I-40 at Fenner. Plus they had some fine root beer! Win-win.



And did I mention the skies were epic?









Hard to ask for better photography conditions than that! But I guess I could still ask for other things I like. Root beer? Check. Full tank of gas? Check. Hmmm.... I like trains, can there be trains here too?



Sure, why not.



In fact, Route 66 was closed in either direction, so it was either follow the tracks out of town, or backtrack to the freeway. Freeways are boring!


Bummer dude!



Sorry folks, had to wring that one out pretty hard in photoshop to make it look right, and it still doesn't do justice to what I was seeing at the moment. The cloud base must have had a bit of a slope to it, because it only took a few seconds for the sunlight to pour in beneath it. It was as if God Himself had upgraded the sky to the latest fade-in dimmer system, and I had stumbled in upon its first full-scale test. He was even so kind as to kick up a dust storm in the distance.





Well, that's about it for this one. Hard to imaging things going any better for this trip... well, unless the powerball ticket I bought on the way home had hit. Actually, that reminds me, I never even checked it....

Sweet, I won four bucks!





Oh, and:

Very nice! I'll keep my eye out for you!

 

Fantastic shots!

 

Following through: Cima Dome, Day Three

As of the last update, I had signed up for three days of planting Joshua Trees, but had only worked two. That ain't right. So having finally found my hiking shoes, I made way back up to the Mojave last week to fulfill my original commitment. And once again, it was fucking epic!



Before I forget, @AMMO461, I present tree 5983. See, I'm following through!




Today's crew

The day began of course with filling my tank at $7 per gallon in Baker before heading to the event HQ on the north face of Cima Dome. This time around I only managed to tackle two sites, but that's because we turned out to be missing one of the fence/cage assemblies, discovering this only upon reaching our target coordinates late that morning. So rather than tackle a third site that afternoon, I headed out solo to install the missing cage, and was thus able to take my sweet time enjoying the most-spectacular scenery that adorns the upper reaches of Cima Dome.



I'm still not yet home, so I can't process videos, but when I get the chance, I intend to drop a gif here of the sun-soaked grass rippling in the winds. It was utterly beautiful!

Update -- see what I mean?:




(checks bird guide) Look--a bald eagle!






Finally installed the cage around the seedling, which, adjacent to one named "Nicholas Cage," had appropriately been named "Nicholas Uncaged." That's not actually the one photographed here, but this shot turned out to be my best, so deal with it. I believe this one was named either "Con Air" or "National Treasure."


I wonder why they called this place "Valley View"

After dropping off the now-empty water bag to HQ late that afternoon, I learned that the remnants of my group had headed out to a third site on the eastern slope of the Mescal range (or the Ivanpahs, depending on which map you reference), not far from my next planned destination anyway: the Evening Star Mine. So I headed their way and had soon located their vehicle. Scanning in the direction of the plant site with binoculars, I became clear there was little I could to to help at this point. They had presumably already completed the hardest phase of the effort: lugging all the supplies to the site, located just beyond the ridgeline from here. Their trek back would be an easy one, and even if I could have intercepted them, there would be little benefit to relieving them of their now-empty water jugs and buckets. So, without having sighted them, I made the call to press on to the mine, thus ensuring I'd never get a chance to wish them a proper goodbye. Sorry guys!



And the Evening Star didn't disappoint!



I rode out the sunset from this location.



As the sun dove below the horizon, I planned to make way back towards Goldome, but the trip was beset by several delays. The first of which was when I caught glimpse of a tantalizingly unexplored adit to my south. I believe this one was the Hartman:



Solidly gated, there was little to explore by foot here, at least not without venturing beyond a stone's throw from where I had parked, which was the extent of my ambition at the time. But being able to approach the adit head-on with lights-a-blazin', I was able to snap this fun shot of its inner workings from the grate:



Once back on the equally rough "thoroughfare," an increasingly unnerving noise from the engine bay became too loud to ignore. It sounded like my fan was hitting the radiator, or perhaps the fan shroud, at certain RPMs. Sure enough, my radiator was quite loose. I did my best to snug it up with the tools at hand, but definitely, this is something I need to investigate when I get back home! The noise at least went away, so I'll call that a trailside victory.



Finally underway again, my next destination was to revisit the Goldome Mill. And as irritated as I am by the modern vandalism that likely cemented this site's fate to demolition rather than preservation, I also couldn't resist the urge to photograph the result in proper darkness. While my first visit a week prior had occurred in the blaring glare of the full moon, today's visit would enjoy several moonless hours after dusk, and I was hoping the skies might reveal themselves for any of several compositions I had in mind...



Well, things didn't totally work out for me... first and foremost, the galaxy didn't quite line up with any of the compositions I had tentatively planned. More problematically, the day's relentless winds had kicked up vast quantities of dust, which largely bleached out any remaining potential of the skies above.

But ultimately what doomed my night-sky photography session was childish terror.

I'm not usually one to get scared away while exploring creepy places alone at night. But this place was, like, super-duper creepy. And there was one focal point for my terror: the image of Pennywise (the clown from "It") embellished on a water tank facing the far side of the site -- here's a yet-unposted wide-angle from the prior week's visit:


Look close, he's lurking there in the shadows...

I enjoyed a relatively sheltered childhood. No broadcast TV, save for public television (simply by virtue of shitty reception from the aerial). No Nintendo either. Not even a VCR at home, at least until well into the 90s. Yet somehow, someone dropped the ball, and my innocent eyes watched the original "It" movie when it first came out on VHS, in total darkness after school one day... and it was fucking traumatic. I'm guessing I was in fifth grade, and had literally never seen a single horror movie in my life. "It" was my first. Sure, as an adult, I thoroughly enjoyed the more recent major Hollywood film based on the same story. But back then, when my impressionable young mind was still being forged, and apparently repressed to the present day, a deep-rooted mortal fear of being murdered by this one specific clown had been permanently scarred into my psyche. Somehow, the scenario involved entanglement by a shower head... I forget the details, but I spent at least a decade wearily glancing over my shoulder to make sure the plumbing remained stationary each and every time I showered. I at least remember that much.

So, knowing damn-well that I would be creeped-out by this cheesy-ass painting of a clown at the far side of the building, I drove directly to that side of the site and parked there, aligning the headlights to the gaping hole in the wall, and charged in to overcome my irrational unease like an adult.

And, at this exact moment, the bitter-cold winds whipped up in an unearthly cacophony, and as the abandoned structure surrounding me creaked unnervingly, the tattered remnants of the vandalized sheet metal above clashed together so loudly that I instinctively flinched and froze in my steps. And that's when the bats emerged. Like holy shit, what kind of low-budget horror-flick bullshit is this, but I was instantly enveloped by dozens of bats, swarming and chirping harmlessly yet overbearingly ominously. I lost my shit. I shrieked like a child. I dove for my bed and pulled the covers over my tear-soaked eyes.


Nope.

Well actually I sheepishly dove back into the cab of the truck and made haste to the other side of the site to gather my thoughts. You'll notice a disappointing lack of photos to accompany this narrative. One reason is that my dash cam had once again shit the bed earlier that day. (Fuck, just when I needed it, it fails again!) The other reason is that I was terrified. Terrified! I'm lucky I didn't drop my camera, because if I did, I'd have abandoned it there forever. Shooting a photo was the last thing on my mind. The one above was an afterthought, taken through the rolled-up window as the tires spun futilely at highway speeds.

Well... in retrospect I can't wait to come back someday to tackle this place again, hopefully with better skies above. But also with, like, a grown-up. This shit is too scary for a kid.



So there I sat, trying to regather the confidence to ever emerge from the truck again. Listening to the relentless howl of the winds and the unnerving creaking and clattering of the decaying structure before me. Wondering where exactly my life had gone wrong, how my haphazard pursuit of mediocre amateur photography had somehow led me to this abandoned superfund site, alone, not just once, but now for the second time in as many weeks, and with renewed vigor to see it in total darkness. If this was a horror movie, I would be its least-noteworthy victim, the bumbling moron who gleefully stumbles into the jaws of fate in the opening act.

Yet still, the moonless skies beckoned me from above. I had a few hours to spare. This place was absolutely fascinating. All I needed was to overcome my fears, emerge from the truck, gather my gear, set up my lighting, frame the shot, meter the exposure... then listen as the winds carry away my final screams as I'm violently murdered at this desolate outpost of hell.



So as a compromise between shamelessly chickening out and flagrantly inviting my own brutal demise, I decided to shoot just the cyanide tanks at the front of the site, without ever needing to re-enter the main building or face certain death therein. Plus, the tanks are the only remnant of the idiotic vandalism project intact today, owing simply to the thick-walled steel construction of the tanks, as opposed to any conscious foresight by the illiterate fuckwit vandals who trashed the place to help sustain their freeloading criminal lifestyle.

And even then, the skies were pretty lame. Not as lame as vandalizing an abandoned mill on public lands, though.

Edit: Here's one more shot I found from that night, showing typical conditions for my attempts at winter astrophotography. These include:

1. The more interesting parts of the galaxy have already set
2. What's left of it is always in the exact opposite direction as my intended composition
3. Lingering twilight and pronounced zodiacal light, because if I waited for proper darkness I'd miss the "wow" region of the galaxy altogether, and also, I'd get super cold by then.



Anyway...



Having nervously tip-toed through my truncated night-photography agenda at Goldome, but utterly relieved that I hadn't been murdered (nor even slightly ensnared by anthropomorphized plumbing fixtures), I set out for the next destination: Death Valley. Well, first stop was Baker for another tank of $7/gallon fuel... but then: Death Valley. And that's where this story ends, and the next will begin, at a l̶o̶o̶s̶e̶l̶y̶ impressively planned meet-up just outside the park's boundaries, below the grade of the former Death Valley Railroad, reconnecting with the perfect person for the next day's adventure...

 

Loosely planned? Dang man, I was impressed with the planning. There was like 10 minutes between arrival times, and we started more than 24 hours away from the spot.

Can't wait for the next segment. You know, so I don't have to write anything, I just have to scratch out your watermarks and insert mine.

​

 

MK5 PRESENTS:

MK5’s Death Valley Adventure (TM)

A MK5 PRODUCTION

(c) 2022 MK5

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

That’s right, all of them​

I recently heard there were problems with plagiarism on the forum, so let’s get one thing clear up front: This whole adventure is 100% mine. Pay no attention to the other guy, all he did was propose the hike in the first place, then drive a thousand miles nonstop to meet me there. So he’d better not be planning to plagiarize this masterpiece of a trip report!

<><><><><><><><>
The crack of dawn
<><><><><><><><>​

“Lens cap at dawn” by @mk5 (2022)

I’ll thank my lucky stars that I sleep quite comfortably in the reclined passenger seat of my truck. Maybe it’s all the time I’ve spent flying cross-country in back-row economy, you know, where you can’t even recline the seat because it’s crammed right up against the shitter. If you can get enough sleep to function through another day, crumpled forward against the reclined seatback of a petulant toddler pelting you with half-eaten cheerios all night, stuck between two screaming JT8Ds on a clapped-out MD80, through the relentless onslaught of sweaty butts brushing against your face as an unending queue of flatulent passengers pass crotch-to-crotch, each awaiting their turn to slam the lavatory door more loudly than the last… well, if you’ve evolved to sleep through that, then the reclined passenger seat of a pickup truck doesn’t seem bad at all. Matter of fact, I find it downright comfortable, and I sleep even better there than I do on an air mattress in a tent. Heck, without a service cart slamming into my elbow every 15 minutes, I need an alarm clock to wake up when I’m sleeping in the mobile luxury hotel that is my reclined passenger seat.

But that’s not even the best part. See, with no tent to take down, no air mattress to deflate, and the all-too-easy decision to skip breakfast altogether, I can break camp in a heartbeat. Those idiot overlanders with their elaborate rooftop sleeping contraptions got it all wrong—less is more! I’ll always be the first one ready to hit the trail, bright and early in the morning. It’s not laziness… it’s pure strategic genius.

And so comforting was this smug blissfulness that I forgot to set an alarm and totally slept in. I don’t even remember what finally woke me up, perhaps it was the sun’s glaring blaze and relentless heat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dan had been pounding on my window for an hour already. The memory begins like that of any other day, in a blur of anger and confusion.

Where the hell are my shoes?

Through half-open eyes I had watched Dan emerge nimbly from his fancy-pants rooftop tent, having apparently already dressed, packed, and fed himself for that morning’s hike. I blinked again--now he had effortlessly packed away the tent and hopped into his idling pickup truck, waiting patiently for me to get my act together. Another blink--what the L.L. Bean fuck--now he’s rocking shades over an outdoorsy-looking hoodie? So much for the crack of dawn, I guess… it was already bright-ass day. Squinting in its godforsaken sunlight, I slowly turned my gaze to the side: my propane fireplace still sat on the ground half-assembled from the night before.

I’d kill for a coffee right now.

This wasn’t a Delta redeye—coffee wasn’t on the menu. I fumbled my water bottle from the fridge, uncapped it, and tipped it back. Nothing. It was iced over. I tried to give it a little shake, but instead I slammed it against the roof, lost my grip, and dropped it right on my face. It bounced off my lip and landed upside-down in my lap, dislodging the blockage of ice as intended, but unleashing its torrent of freezing-cold water in an entirely unintended and instantly regretted location.

Fuuuuuck!

I managed to grab the bottle before too much had drained, but could only gasp for air as the flood of icewater coursed through my clothing to the seat below. Then I heard the rattle of its cap tumbling into the bottomless abyss beneath my seat. Guess I’d be hiking without my water bottle today. I gazed forward again at Dan’s idling pickup truck, parked perfectly level despite the uneven terrain—no, pretentiously level, perched atop hand-placed boulders. Perhaps that was the missing piece of the puzzle, the keystone to the all-elusive NiGhT oF ReStFuL sLeEp and the kind of cheerful, energetic mornings that only exist in Hallmark movies. Maybe I parked on the wrong fucking rocks.

God, now he’s running around with a camera.

Wiping the crusted drool and pooling blood from my lip, I returned to staring blankly at my feet. I had found only one shoe. And I had tied it to the wrong foot.

<><><><><>
The hike
<><><><><>​

We were soon underway towards our destination--not far away--and while we both had ambitions to visit other places later that day, they were in opposite directions, so this would be the only hike together. The goal was to visit a particularly interesting mine and an adjacent slot canyon, located within the park boundaries, but probably on private land, and we didn’t know if public hiking was allowed there.


Finally rolling…

Land ownership, management, jurisdictions, etc. are confusing and complex throughout the park--I’m not sure I’ll ever make sense of it. As an example, much of the nearby Twenty Mule Team Canyon appears to be private, non-NPS land, at least according to the BLM’s “administrative units” layer on arcgis, which I frequently reference to find the edges of public lands from which I can legally operate my flying camera. But TMT canyon is a well-known public thoroughfare promoted as a tourist destination within the park -- hikers are clearly welcome there. Plus, I bet I’d get in trouble if I got caught flying a drone there, setting up camp with a roaring campfire, or anything else prohibited within the park. Not that camping or aerial photography were on the agenda today; I just wanted to frame an example of apparently privately held land that’s essentially part of the park.



At the improvised trailhead

Well, today’s destination lies within the same enclave of contiguous non-NPS land as TMT (at least according to my maps), and online research as to the viability of the hike had been inconclusive. So our plan was to approach it like it was any other part of the park, knowing that we might have to turn back in disappointment should a locked gate or posted signage bar our passage. There are probably better ways to find out, by far the most-fun and conceptually simple is to try in person. And the reason I’m writing this out is to establish a basis for “plausible deniability,” in case we weren’t supposed to hike there. Because we totally did, and it was great.



Cowabunga, dude!

Other than a signed, modern chain-link fence protecting the immediate perimeter of the primary structure at the mine, we reached the site without encountering the slightest indication that we were unwelcome. The moment of peril was a gate located just beyond eyesight of the mine. Finding it wide open, we gladly pressed on.



My typical role in group hikes: lagging behind, facing the wrong way, and snapping pictures…


However, based on the modern fence and other signs of recent activity at the mine itself, as well as other things we observed on the way out, I’m left to conclude that the mine is likely still privately owned, and that public visitation may or may not be welcome. The hike certainly isn’t properly marked against trespass, and lies firmly within the perimeter of a national park that’s world-renown for hiking and mining heritage. But I don’t want to suggest anything contrary to the land owner/administrator(s) wishes here -- a wiser traveler should first investigate the situation more carefully before going there. Thus I’m not naming the mine here, and ask that you don’t either in reply. I can post photos in slightly clearer conscience believing they won’t populate mainstream internet search results.



While one might question the validity of this aging message stenciled on the remains of an antique stove(?) located roadside on approach to the canyon, its utility is unquestionably negated by its orientation: facing towards the mine, one notices it only on the return trip!


I’m not kidding, we both took dozens of pictures of this stupid stove on the way in (well, at least I did), but never noticed the gigantic “KEEP OUT” message until the return hike!



Not that it wasn’t there the whole time…

In fact, I kind of like the idea of not posting names of places in general. Not to suggest I’m some kind of pious gatekeeper of knowledge, but simply because it’s rarely relevant, frequently unknown to me at the time anyway, and most of all, I’ve come to truly enjoy sleuthing my way around satellite maps to find these places based on breadcrumbs and random photos from around the internet. That’s just the kind of forward-thinking innovation you’ll find here on the MK5 thread. I’m sure more-popular travel bloggers will soon plagiarize my fantastic new idea and omit place names in their work as well.



And if you’re wondering what was cooking on the stove that morning:



It was broken glass… Yum!


MK5 Photography Pro-Tip: A polarizer can help pull in spectacular color from reflections on glass surfaces. Or you can forget your polarizer in the car, take a crappy picture, and just crank the fuck out of the saturation in Photoshop! Subscribe for more photography pro-tips!


I’ll also note that more formal signage was observed at the terminus of the mining access road at CA190. But our hike didn’t begin there—we picked up the road only as it approached the canyon. And confusingly, that portion of the road (as well as the overland route we hiked) is listed as public (NPS) land on arcgis, which if true, makes me wonder if the signage observed simply predates modern park boundaries. Like I said, it’s confusing. I really like hiking in Death Valley and try to do what’s right; it’s not always easy and sometimes I make mistakes. I’m hoping this isn’t one of them.



Note the little Easter egg at the top … some idiot left a hole in the ridgeline!

Just past the gate, the massive ore chute of the mine poked into view, tempting us from around the next bend(s) in the canyon. But first, I had read there was an interesting side canyon to be explored to the left.



Looks like a side-canyon to me…



Into the narrows?

Well, it turned out I had sent us up the wrong fork. This was not the quarter-mile-long photogenic slot with chokestones and natural arches I had read about online several months ago. But per usual, I had long since forgotten all details from the “exhaustive internet reconnaissance” phase of delusional trip planning. In fact, I tend to screw up navigation even with printed guidebooks and GPS in hand… and let’s not forget the place had just experienced a thousand-year flood. So who was I to doubt whether this shorter and less-interesting side canyon was anything other than the one I had intended to hike? In any case, it was at least a canyon, so we hiked it as far as we could, quickly reaching its primary noteworthy feature: A narrow near-horizontal squeeze through which floodwaters have scoured laterally beneath a canyon wall, essentially forming a tunnel, sealed by a bridge of mass waste spanning to the opposite wall. And although I’m anything but a geologist, I do think ‘tunnel’ is the better-suited term here vs. ‘natural bridge.’ The passage is significantly longer than it is wide, and is barely tall enough to crawl through.



The tunnel’s northern portal



Pretty sure I could fit…

This obstacle forces the hiker to choose between either a precarious and dusty belly-crawl beneath the potentially unstable canyon wall to one side, or a precarious and dusty scramble up the steep and definitely unstable bridge of mass-fall piled high against the other side of the canyon.



Option one: stupid



Option two: sketchy



Nut sure what he saw up there, but am looking forward to the photo


A third option, most favorable in hindsight, would be for the hiker to simply admire this narrow tunnel from its entrance, affording much the same benefit as proceeding any further, but with much less risk of falling or getting crushed in a landslide in the wrong stupid canyon. It turns out the hikeable channel terminates at a ~16-foot dryfall at the next bend anyway. A steep climb up a branch to the right might lead to further marvels, but didn’t look particularly promising from the bottom. At least not through the blur of all the dirt in my eyes at the time.



Dead-end, bro!




Here’s the most interesting shot from the tunnel’s far side… an erosion channel left by a presumably recent and mild rainfall. I’m sure it would have been interesting to watch this form, but I definitely wouldn’t want to have been standing here during last August’s rains, which washed out essentially all roads in the park--and within this specific watershed, totaled an entire parking lot full of cars at the Inn, not too far downstream from here.


I came up with a novel and brilliant idea for the shot below, placing my other lens in frame to provide a subject and a sense of scale and perspective. And wouldn’t you know it, Dan copied this idea without giving me any credit, now you see his lens or lens cap showing up in his photos from several years ago!



The “don’t wiggle through the tunnel” variant of the hike also has the benefit that you won’t decide to swap lenses on your mirrorless camera while pinned on your back in a narrow dusty slot canyon, laughing like a moron while debris rains from above.



I can taste this picture

You know, the camera you just picked up from being professionally cleaned, immediately prior to this trip?




Geology fun-facts with MK5: If you’re looking at, like, rocks or whatever, then it’s going to be one of three types: (1) igneous, meaning it came from lava, (2) sedimentary, meaning it came from an ancient seabed, or (3) fool’s good, because nobody’s going to leave real gold just lying around for you to find. Photographed above is pretty clearly an ancient seabed--we can tell because the ancient fish loved decorating their ancient seabeds with these kick-ass white pinstripes. Thanks, ancient fish! Make sure to subscribe for more fun geology facts!



Emerging from the shade…


Returning to the main channel and proceeding towards the mine… we charged straight past the actual hiker-friendly slot canyon which forked to the left along the way. (Well, I don’t know if it’s still hiker-friendly today, in light of the recent flooding. But I do know I was smugly content that we had already hiked the slot canyon, even though we hadn’t.)




As is sometimes the case with loose badlands terrain in this part of the country… the ground was shimmering with bits of mica. And yes, I did tweak the one above to bring out the sparkles.. but here’s a close-up if you don’t believe me:



Fool’s gold!

<><><><><>
The mine
<><><><><>​

I’m going to go ahead and bring in a passive, 3rd-person narrator for the rest of the story. You know, just in case we weren’t supposed to be poking around there. Catch y’all later!



Hi there, folks, this mk5 guy asked me to narrate this pile of pictures!




The ore chute was even larger and more impressive than the hikers had expected.




The signage attached to the fence cites Nevada law, and although this is located in California, the message is quite clear. Although it partially spoils the photos, one hopes this fence will protect and preserve this spectacular structure for future hikers to enjoy (or maybe… for future miners? Can they even still mine here? I mean… if they killed off Boraxo and Billie, what hope does this place have?)




Interesting rocks were also observed... although apparently only one of these guys knows how to choose the correct lens for photographing rocks. Seriously, a fisheye shot?




Many photographs were taken, but the photographer’s camera was so filthy, it took him days and days to remove like a bazillion dust spots from all his terrible photos. It didn’t help that he kept shooting into the sun, too. What a train wreck.




One day -- that’s how long it took mk5 to trash his freshly cleaned camera. One. Fucking. Day. This is why he can’t have nice things.




Gosh, he sure likes taking pictures of this shed…





We get it, dude, it’s a shed. MOVE ON!




Okay… now the other guy has already explored the whole site, but @mk5 is still stumbling around this boring-ass shed taking the same terrible pictures over and over again.




Dude, it’s a shed. It’s not even that interesting! Does this guy not see the gigantic ore chute directly in front of him? Go take pictures of the mine stuff already!




Okay, now the other guy is back from walking around, and he’s starting to look bored … but our idiot photographer is still fixated on the same fucking shed?




Annnnd… now he’s playing with rocks. At the shed. Who gave this moron a driver’s license?




Okay, finally, thank god, he’s turning his attention to this gigantic spectacular ore chute that we all wanted to see!




Oh my god, I give up. It’s a fucking shed. We get it.




You know what, I’m done narrating this shit. Call me when this ass-clown takes a picture that doesn’t suck. I’ll be at the bar.

 

Hey, where’d my third-person narrator go? He was supposed to be captioning all these pictures for me--err, I mean, for this anonymous hiker!


(Was that shed beautiful or what!)


Oh well, looks like we’re at the end of the film roll anyway. Just one more to share:



On the way up, I had joked that if we weren’t supposed to hike to the mine, then we’d be picked off by a sniper in a guard tower. So imagine my surprise when I totally found a sniper tower right there at the mine – and thank God it was unmanned! Dan insisted it was more likely a crude lavatory for mine workers. He must not watch many Hollywood movies, because nobody would watch a movie about crude lavatories for miners, but snipers are like the third-best thing a movie can have after explosions and boobs.


Well, in the end, it was a fun and easy hike, even though I missed the slot canyon and spent the whole time taking blurry pictures of a shed. I really hope we weren’t trespassing—but if so, let me reiterate that this is 100% Dan’s fault. This whole thing was his idea. I really had nothing to do with it.


(c) 2022 MK5



Cowabunga, dude!

 

Thank god you finally got that posted, now I can "write" mine. I think I'll start with Ctrl+C, dork around for a bit playing some computer game, and wrap it up with Ctrl+V. Won't take long.

Great story dude, I had a fantastic time.