Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

by Eureka Dunes

 

Well you can use the AAA Death Valley map, and the AAA Indian country maps are good sources for pretty accurate mileage, they used to be updated annually by AAA. Titus usually gets washed out in the lower canyon, we had to replace the lower gate 2 times in 4 yrs. Lots of nice cuts through west side road and a few others, watch for them they are tie rod busters if you hit them fast enough.
I was there the summer of 84 when the original flood tore up the Wildrose Canyon /Trona road. Rains are 2 edged swords, lots of flowers some times and lots of destruction road wise in the canyons. Always worth the trip regardless of the limited travel at times. Just pay attention and realize that what may not look like much drama at the beginning can be alot of hassle further down the trail.

 

Used those 2 AAA maps for many moons. AAA produced the first "auto maps" for DV and even put up some of the first signage. I saw one, in and for the town of Gold Valley decades ago, long gone now.

 

Today I helped out a couple camped at Homestake. They had the AAA map and it didn't show mileage for Lippincott. The NatGeo does.

 

Isn't there a trail leading to Panamint from the opposite direction ?


You can hike over from Johnson canyon off of the west side road, makes for a nice overnighter. A good friend and I hiked over that back in 90. I imagine Panamint hasn't changed much. The flood that wiped out the road was a duesy.

 

Hike from panamint city over to Johnson canyon- to Hungry Bill's ranch then on down, you would need a shuttle or a second vehicle drop off.

 

Back in 85 I met a guy at the gas station in Furnace creek, who worked for CAA. He did surveys for the AAA maps, but he didn't have a good enough rig to go down lippincott. He was driving a ford exploder. I would've killed for that job.

 

looks like a chuckwalla maybe

 

When dealing with paper maps I find the older the better. For example when researching/viewing/downloading 7.5 min quads from USGS, the maps with earlier survey dates frequently show much more detail/trail/historical info. I find myself transposing these "forgotten" items on to the nice durable TI maps.

Heck, my first DV guide book (late 50's) talks about active mining in upper Hanaupah and Trail Canyon as a thru route.

 

Good basecamp area. Still quite remote for resupply. Depending on your starting point, either vegas I15N, Pahrump I15 S, Ridgecrest 395 S, lone pine or Bishop 395 N are good places to stock up on victals. Have a great time, the north end of the valley is a pretty sweet place.

 

Absolutely. My ex-youth pastor, who used to lead our youth trips out to DV, has maps from the 1960s and 1970s that have roads and mines on them that I still visit all the time that have been completely removed from the newer maps. I've told him (only half-jokingly) that he needs to leave those maps to me in his will.

 

Would love to see those reproduced on the web.

 

I would too. Unfortunately I think he'd run into copyright issues. Besides, he's a complete Luddite. He still has a hard time navigating e-mail.

 

Get the maps. I'll help digitize. And we'll keep it underground.

 

You shouldn't need to do anything if they are just USGS topos. All the historical ones are online (well some are still in the process of being scanned). Here's a corner of the 1913 topo in the Panaminits. Free downloads from USGS!

 

We'll see. He lives 600 miles away from me now, so it's not an easy task to see him. We were all supposed to get together and go to DV this winter, but the only other guy in our group who has a 4x4 had to cancel because he couldn't get the time off work, so the trip fell apart.

No, these were mostly AAA maps, some Park Service maps. But they also have a lot of his notes on them as well.

That's a great resource though, I'm going to bookmark that for my next trip, thanks.

If I ever join a TW DV trip I should drag Chet along to it, you guys would get a kick out of him. He started taking us to DV when I was in junior high, because his youth pastor took him to DV when he was in junior high back in the early 60s. He'll tell you all stories that will turn your hair white.