Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

5 Days in the Desert travelog #25
Ridgecrest, CA - Wed, 28 Dec 2022, 1pm

We're close to wrapping up our "5 Days in the Desert" trip. Today we're headed home, but first with a detour to visit Trona Pinnacles just southwest of Death Valley. We've been wanting to visit the Trona Pinnacles for years, but it seems that each time we're in Death Valley there just isn't quite enough time to get over here. Thus we tacked it on to the end of this trip. It was an easy drive from Barstow to the town of Ridgecrest, California this morning. From there it was about a 15 mile drive out of town to reach the access road, then a 5 mile drive on dirt and gravel roads.



So, what are the Trona Pinnacles? They're a set of tufa spires, tufa being a calcium carbonate formation created underwater. Yes, underwater. This desert basin at about 1,800 feet elevation used to be 700 feet underwater. At the end of the last Ice Age, glaciers from the Sierra Nevada melted and formed a huge inland sea. What's left of it today is the mostly dry Searles Lake, several miles north of here.



The main access road to Trona Pinnacles is accessible to orindary passenger cars. There's also a short driving loop. There's a hiking loop, too, plus a number of shorter trail up to & around the various tufa formations.



We had fun hoofing it through the main clusters of formations. After that we drove into one of the other sets of formations. The roads to this other part of the park are rouger and require 4wd and/or higher clearance to avoid getting stuck.


Now it's time to head home. Well, after we finish eating lunch in Ridgecrest it's time to head home.

5 Days in the Desert travelog #22
Pisgah, CA - Mon, 26 Dec 2022, 5pm

We drove Route 66 east, including stopping for a classic Route 66 picture along the way, to Pisgah Crater. Visiting Pisgah Crater was ironically one of the things we planned this trip around. That's ironic because we've wound up doing various other things the past few days and only got here this afternoon.



It's further ironic because as we approached Pisgah Crater we realized it's a fucking gravel pit. The volcanic cinder cone has been mined for decades for cinder and gravel. The road up the sde of the cone (yes, there's a road all the way up) is marked "private property" and "no trespassing". We met two other explorers chilling at the base of the mountain and asked them where to go. They recommended we simply ignore the hand-painted private property signs as the mine owner has been essentially bankrupt for decades.

Geologically this crater isn't as interesting as Amboy Crater, which we visited two days earlier. Amboy is unspoiled by mining operations. Amboy also shows multiple concentric rings inside the crater from a series of eruptions. OTOH, Pisgah has a variety of lava tubes and caves. We explored around for a bit on the BLM lands and found only a collapsed lava tube plus a few small caves.

5 Days in the Desert travelog #20
Yermo, CA - Mon, 26 Dec 2022, 2pm

Today is shaping up to be as much about the driving as the hiking. But that's okay because the driving is purposefully scenic. The old Native American prayer, In Beauty I Walk, doesn't mean literally walking. It means journeying, as in the journey through life. Sometimes that journey is behind the wheel.

We finished up driving the Mojave Road through Afton Canyon by exiting at Basin Road, about 8 miles east of where we entered. The canyon, with its steep, colorful walls, had petered out by that point anyway. There were no more amazing side canyons like Spooky Canyon or the way nicer unnamed canyon. But it's still interesting to drive through a river. Here's a quick video:


Once back on dry, paved land we headed back toward Barstow, not to call it a day yet but merely to get lunch closer to town before heading back out across the desert. We ate at EddieWorld in Yermo. Yes, it's a bit tourist-trappy, but their food's pretty good and they have the biggest selection of stuffed animals I've ever seen under one roof. We bought a pizza, a chicken fingers basket, a couple of drinks, and a couple of sheep.

Up next: we'll head out east again to drive/hike at Pisgah Crater.

5 Days in the Desert travelog #18
Afton Canyon, CA - Mon, 26 Dec 2022, 12:30pm

We set out today for a combination of wheeling and hiking in Afton Canyon. My goals upon planning this adventure were threefold:

1. Cross the Mojave River— kind of to prove to myself I could (DONE)
2. Explore the beauty of Afton Canyon in general (IN PROGRESS)
3. Find & explore Spooky Canyon (TO DO)

An important aspect of adventure, perhaps the defining thing about adventure, is the unknown. It's the discovery of something you couldn't plan that turns out to be really enjoyable. In yesterday's hike at Kelso Dunes it was hiking along the dune ridges— and narrating travel videos— on my way down. Today it's been finding & exploring an unnamed side canyon.



We haven't made it to Spooky Canyon yet but we just found & explored this unnamed side canyon. We were able to navigate it (on foot!) a lot farther up than we expected. What a beautiful serendipity.

I had so much fun making those little videos at Kelso Dunes yesterday I did it again with this canyon. This time, though, I stitched all the shorts together into a single, longer video.


Join me in a walk back down from the top of the narrows!

5 Days in the Desert travelog #15
Cima, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 5pm

I left off in my last blog entry with us descending into the bowels of the earth after an hour+ long drive to the remote lava tubes in Mojave National Preserve. I decided that after all that effort I would not be deterred by having to crawl on my hands and knees a bit, so in I went.



Well, I didn't have to crawl right away. The entryway (above) was tall enough that I could pretty much stand and walk as I carefully lowered myself down the jagged rocks. Not far inside, though....



The ceiling dropped low, not much more than 3 feet high. "Is this the end?" we wondered.

Hawk delved deeper as she was able to navigate under the low ceiling merely by bending over and squatting. It opened up again after 10 feet or so.

"C'mon," she said. "It's worth it!"



On the other side of the low ceiling was this fairly sizable chamber. Overhead are three windows to the outside. Two are obvious at the top of the picture (above), split by a small arch. The third is at the far end of the chamber, where you can see an orange light filtering down. We'd seen the split window along the trail on the surface as we walked to the tube entrance but not the smaller window.

Good new/bad news: While this chamber was a great find, the lava tube definitely ended here. And the other direction from the ladder ended in about 15' with nothing but a pile of rubble from a collapsed roof. Oh, but there was one other thing on the way out....



This rock struck me as looking something like a geode. Well, not a geode because those aren't crystals hanging down from the topside. It's a volcanic rock shell with some smoother minerals on the underside.

Speaking of underside, it was time to leave the underside of the earth and get back to its surface.

We returned to the car and picked our way carefully down the lava 4x4 trail. Back at the Subaru parking area we met another pair of visitors arriving— in a Subaru— and chatted with them about road conditions. We'd seen them arriving from the opposite direction and wanted to know how passable routes other than the Mojave Road (link to my YouTube video) are.

It turned out to be a two-way exchange of information... like the best 4x4 backcountry conversations are. Our new acquaintances were Chinese visitors who spoke limited English. But their English was better than my extremely limited Chinese.

I unfolded a paper map and used that to help frame our halting conversation. They'd come from the north on different roads than we took from the east. Their route was obviously passable, though they warned they had to drive slowly, like 5mph in some difficult parts, and never faster tha 15mph in the best parts. I cast a side eye toward their Subaru and figured that we'd do better than that. In exchange, I explained for them how to drive the Mojave Road. They were using only Google Maps on a phone... and there really wasn't any signal out here, miles from the nearest paved road.

We parted ways; they went toward the cave while we started north.



Right away the road was smoother than the Mojave Road. It was graded dirt and did not have those whoop-de-doos (YouTube video link) that had forced us to keep our speed down— otherwise we'd have been looking like stunt drivers from The Dukes of Hazzard!

There was one tough part about a mile out where we climbed a rocky hill navigating past a mostly defunct mine. Our capable 4x4 walked it. After that it was smooth sailing. We picked up a route following along utility lines (pic above). That confirmed we were headed the right way. If in doubt, follow the telephone lines back to civilization!

5 Days in the Desert travelog #13
Kelso, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 2pm

In the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, in the middle of the desert, is a beautiful train station. It was built in 1924 in a Spanish Revival style. ...So it looks like a certain building memorialized in a classic, classic rock song. Trains still pass by on the active rails, but the station hasn't seen a passenger in probably more than 50 years.



A big depot was built out here back in the 1920s as part of the infrastructure for steam locomotives. The Cima Grade to the east has a rise of 2.2% over 19 miles. That's too steep for steam locomotives pulling a full train to ascend. The depot was built as a base of operations for "helper engines", locomotives that would join the train to help pull it up the grade.

Servicing these helper engines required significant staff: not just pilots but also boiler-makers, mechanics, hostlers, and water tenders. Oh, and there was a water pipeline several miles long to bring lots of water down from springs up in the Providence Mountains. And once you have hundreds of workers in all these various trades housed in the middle of nowhere you also need cooks, housekeepers, plumbers, carpenters, accountants, constables, etc. Plus there was a mine nearby.

The depot saw its heyday during WWII. Not only was the mine running at peak operation to support the war effort and trains busy moving cargo east and west, but passenger trains carrying draftees to ports on the West Coast for deployment to the Pacific theater passed through.

Not long after WWII the depot shut down. ...Not because trains stopped running on the tracks, but because diesel engines replaced steam engines. A diesel locomotive individually isn't as powerful as a steam locomotive (that's what I learned when I visited the California State Railroad Museum, anyway) but diesel engines are much easier to synchronize to run in tandem. Watch any train passing through this area nowadays and you'll see they usually have 3 or even 4 engines.

5 Days in the Desert travelog #11
Kelso, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 11:30am

It's Christmas! And if you're like us and don't celebrate Christmas you find something else fun to do instead. For us that's going hiking. Especially somewhere warm. How about a desert? We're in the Mojave Desert of California this Christmas. Our Christmas morning hike is at Kelso Dunes.

The Kelso Dunes are a field of sand dunes that reach a height of about 650 feet above the surrounding terrain. Yes, that's tall for sand dunes. They're not quite the tallest in North America, though. The Great Sand Dunes in Colorado reach 750 feet tall. But at 650' these are still darn tall. It's obvious from the trailhead 1.5 miles from the peak, that's a lot of sand.



Rather than start with a shot of the dunes from the base of the trail I'll jump into the middle of the trek. Photographs from the base don't do justice to the awesomess of the spectacle. Instead here's a shot (above) from about 3/4 mile in, where we both said, "Wow! What a great view." The mountains in the distance are the Providence Mountains.

At this point we'd ascended maybe 150 feet, about 1/4 of the elevation to the top. Up to here the climb had been fairly gentle. Past this point it got a bit steeper.

Now it makes sense to show a picture of the tallest dune.



The picture above shows the highest point of the dunes.

As we were trekking up this middle part of the route we weren't sure how far we'd go. There isn't really a trail, per se. There's just the footprints of people who climbed on previous days plus our (considerable) ability to read terrain. We were picking what looked like the most passable route to the top but we weren't sure if it would get too steep or dangerous. And yes, it did get steeper.



"Let's at least get to that saddle point," we agreed. It's a spot between the two highest ridges in the dunes. The pic above shows the lower of those two ridges. Again in the background are the Providence Mountains.

Hawk snapped this pic of me admiring the view in the pic above:



From here we made a decision about whether to press onward. I decided to go at least a little farther, 100 meters or so, as the trail looked easily passable. Hawk was hurting from an unrelated injury exacerbated by plodding through loose sand and thought it'd be better to wait for me.



Now here's a view across the lower expanse of the dune field. It was heartening to see how far we'd already come. The trailhead is at the end of that little sandy spur about 1/3 of the way in and down from the upper-right corner of the frame.

We'd come so far... but the summit still beckoned!

To be continued....

Update: video from the summit in my next blog!

5 Days in the Desert travelog #7
Mojave Preserve, CA - Sat, 24 Dec 2022, 4:15pm

This afternoon we hiked the Rings Trail at Banshee Canyon in Mojave National Preserve. We did it as a two-fer after hiking at Amboy Crater earlier in the day.

As metal as this hike's name sounds (Banshee Canyon? Sign me up!) it was actually our second choice for an afternoon hike. First choice was a cave tour at Mitchell Caverns in Providence Mountains State Park. We weren't able to get a reservation in advance (they only take phone reservations one day per week) so we tried our luck just showing up on Christmas Eve. No luck; the tour was already full. But the ranger there suggested we visit Hole-in-Wall at Mojave National Preserve nearby.



The visitor center at Hole-in-the-Wall has an interesting Old West motif. Being nestled at the base of a colorful set of buttes really helps. The rangers there were fairly helpful and recommended the Rings Loop as a short-ish hike we could do the same afternoon. The trail departed from the far side of the parking lot and looped around those buttes... and up through a slot canyon between two of them.



Compared to all those promises about buttes and slot canyons the trail started off mildly. We followed a sandy wash to an old cattle fence. I'm not sure if there used to be a gate of some kind here (see picture above) but it's been torn open. I'm like, 🎵 Who let the cows out/Who, who, who, moo-moo? 🎵



Sure enough as we rounded the bend, sunlit views of the buttes overhead came into view. On some of these lichen-splashed rocks near the base there are Native rock carvings.



While there are views up the cliffs on one side of the trail there are far-off views across the desert scrub on the other. As we got toward the eponymous Hole in the Wall we passed a small herd of horses grazing on wild grass. Beneath another butte, of course, because high desert terrain.



Just past the horses we caught our first glimpse of the Hole in the Wall. BTW, lots of places in the American West are named "Hole in the Wall". I can think of three places right off the top of my head I've hiked with that name, and I'm sure there are dozens more. Basically anyplace there's, well... a hole in a wall... it's a good bet some 19th century settler was like, "OMG, Hole in the Wall!! Best name EVER!!!"

But this one has a second and third name to live up to. It's Banshee Canyon. That sounds like something worth screaming about, right? And it's the Rings Hike... as in, the trail is so steep there in places there are rings anchored into the rock to help you climb up.

To be continued....

Keep reading: Into Banshee Canyons & Up the Rings!

5 Days in the Desert travelog #4
Amboy, CA - Sat, 24 Dec 2022, 11am

This morning we got out for our first hike of our 5 Days in the Desert trip. After breakfast at Del Taco #3 we headed east on I-15 to the I-40 split. Barstow is actually where Interstate 40 starts— or ends, depending on your perspective. The other end is at the Atlantic Ocean, in Wilmington, NC. Yes, I've been to that end of it, too. I haven't (yet) been to all the parts in the middle, though. It's over 2,500 miles!

East of Barstow I-40 follows the route of legendary Route 66. 66 often runs parallel to the newer interstate highway; in places there's as little as 100 feet separating them. At the town of Ludlow— town is really a generous term, as it's really just an exit with two gas stations and a rundown diner from the road's 1950s heyday that may not even be open anymore— Route 66 forks off to the southeast. We exited in Ludlow and followed Route 66.



Here Route 66 is a single ribbon of blacktop, faded almost to beige from decades of relentless sun, arcing across the desert. Once Route 66 departs I-40 there is nothing around for miles. ...Not that there's much around that stretch of I-40, either! Even towns the size of Ludlow are 50 miles apart. Fortunately it's only another 26 miles to Amboy Crater.



So, what is Amboy Crater? It's a volcanic crater about 250 feet high and 1,500 feet across. It's one of the youngest volcanic fields in the US. Its most recent eruption was about 10,000 years ago.



From a distance it doesn't look like much. Fortunately we're not going to stay at this distance. (The cone's about 1 mile away.) We're going to hike right up to it.



Keep reading: Hiking the rim at Amboy Crater

High Desert Weekend Trip-log #12
Red Rock Canyon State Park - Sun, 27 Mar, 2002. 2:15pm

Whew. Part 5. Five blogs just about this tiny state park in the middle of nowhere. We haven't even been here that long! But the time has been packed. After stumbling on and exploring the Old Dutch Cleanser Mine (previous blog) we drove back around to the main red-rocks area of the park. Rocks in brilliantly colored layers are exposed here because a fault line runs through the area. Layers on one side of the fault were lifted up by tectonic action then eroded over millions of years by rain and wind.



This particular area of the park doesn't require any hiking or even any offroad driving.



Despite the ease of access the area didn't have many visitors, even getting on toward mid-afternoon. I think that's testament to the park's remote location and the fact that most people passing through are zooming along the highway at 70+ mph trying to get somewhere else. On a Sunday that's probably "Home, to Southern California."



Speaking of home, we've got to start heading that way, too. But not to Southern California. Our trip back to the Bay Area is actually longer.