We were expecting something like the tufa formations at Pyramid or Mono lakes. You know, some isolated spires of uplifted CaCO3 (that’s calcium carbonate to you non-chemists).

 

But the Trona Pinnacles are far more extensive, and impressive. Firstly, they’re located in a now-sere-dry part of the desert, Searles Lake having gone away a long time ago. Secondly, they run for miles, in every imaginable size and configuration.

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We’d come through Ridgecrest, from the Owens Valley, to see an area of Panamint Valley we’d never explored. The road was easy-peasy until we exited CA-178/Panamint Valley Road and started on the dirt toward the Pinnacles.

After six miles of brain-pounding washboard road, the formations were still very much worth the trip. They poke up everywhere, dominating the landscape through multiple zones around the area occupied by the ancient lake.

As a National Landmark, Trona Pinnacles could be considered — well, understated. There is only one “facility”, a pit toilet adjacent to a big dusty parking area. There are no other toilets, picnic tables, fire-rings, or any evidence of Government contributions.

But there are many rough dirt roads and tracks through the area, providing for ample sightseeing. We picked a nice flat spot for motorhome Howie, and settled in. Happy Hour came an hour early, just to celebrate our lovely ‘find’.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve driven past this area. It’s only 25 miles east of Ridgecrest, so I’m always zipping by to get to Panamint Springs or Death Valley. In all my decades of desert travel, this is the first time here. What a treat.

Sunset came fairly quickly in November, and made for some great photos.

After the sun went and hid, just a few miles to the north, the yellow lights of Trona and its processing plants glowed against the desert night.

All of these formations were made by a very arcane geological process. Rather than describe it to you, I’ll let the local signage do it for me. Here are the various signs that describe the area — click any image for full-size, and you can read how this whole assortment of wonders came to exist.

The next day, we took a quick tour in Karin’s brother’s Earthroamer (awesome vehicle). Not all the roads were this nice, but the big beast took them all in stride — a 16,000-pound Jeep with 41″ tires, 18″ of ground clearance, and a house on its back.

We drove, and then hiked, around the area off and on for a couple of days. We didn’t suffer for any lack of photographic opportunities.

CHINA LAKE – Just north of Ridgecrest is a large military installation, and they run daily sorties of all kinds of heavy-duty aircraft.  You can hear them take off, 20 miles away, and then a few minutes later they are zooming across the desert overhead.

“Airshows” are daily except Sundays. The military operations area (MOA) covers vast areas of the desert, even including Death Valley National Park space. I’m estimating that the exercises can be viewed across at least a few hundred square miles of desert.

Most of the jets were too far away to get decent pix, but a Navy helicopter came by, apparently touring the Pinnacles, and posed for us.

These big aircraft don’t bother at all with noise abatement, and it does indeed devastate the “desert peace”. But, on balance, we love it. Every time one of the big boys go by, we’re impressed with our military.

SURPRISE CANYON

While we were at Trona Pinnacles, a friendly and helpful BLM gal came along (three times!) and we chatted quite a bit. (She was very appreciative of our low-noise, low-impact, and zero-trash camping manners.) One of our takeaways was a strong recommendation to go see Surprise Canyon — yet another feature of Panamint Valley I’d passed up through the years.

This is one of the greatest pleasures of our “roaming” modality. We didn’t know when we started out that we’d be going to Surprise Canyon. But it got on our agenda, and off we went.

We went north on Panamint Valley Road for a bit, then turned off and followed Ballarat Road over to the “town”. It’s just one building, with some tourist items like water bottles and snacks. There is a freezer in the back, with a very appropriate rural/redneck bumper sticker attached – – –

We stopped for a look and chatted a bit with Rocky (the caretaker) and a visitor. Then we boogied off down Indian Ranch Road to the Surprise Canyon turnoff. Going out that road, the hills got closer and the road got rougher.

Soon, several flat areas provided excellent camp sites, with superb views of the Panamint Range. Ranger Ralph stood guard over camp, but there was nobody around for miles. It just makes him feel important.

In the afternoon, we took Siegy’s Earthroamer and drove up Surprise Canyon Road to the end. The road was “nice 4×4” but not suitable for motorhome Howie. Earthroamer, no trouble at all. The year-round water became immediately obvious, with the usual willows and occasional cottonwood.

Supposedly, Chris Wicht camp parking is at road end, but it’s somewhat open to the imagination. The canyon is so narrow and steep that there aren’t any level spots at all. Hmmm, correction, the old residential area and mining platforms are fairly flat, but they’re off limits to vehicles.

Beyond the end of the road, the previous mining truck route has been devastated by years of flash floods, and no road is recognizable at all any longer. The 4×4 folks used to gnarl their way up the canyon, and even winched their super-Jeeps up the falls. But the riparian environment needed some protection, and the second half of the road (about 6 miles) was closed and protected. Hikers only please.

Where the trail is dirt and not rocks, there are hundreds of burro tracks. The charming little herbivores love the water and the browse.

So we finished our short hike and rolled down the road back to camp.

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The next day, we wanted to do some local exploring, in particular an old mining cabin somewhere near the end of Minietta road (farther north). However, Siegy was keen on hiking Surprise, so he went off by himself, back up the Canyon to stay overnight at Wicht and do some more exploring. The big Earthroamer stood out against the flat desert at first, but soon disappeared into the deep terrain.

After a relaxed morning (NO internet), we piled into Ralph for what would be a lightly adventurous day. We headed out north on Indian Ranch Road, to intersect Panamint Valley Road and then turn hard west on Minietta.

The desert is a free-wheeling place in large part, and occasionally, we run across things for which there seems to be little explanation. If you’re intrigued, go to the URL (on the green sign) for some excellent images. But I must say, given the bright sky to the south (Los Angeles), it’s not clear what an astronomy buff would be doing in this low-elevation desert.

Always a surprise, and always a delight, desert greenery crops up in random locations. Here’s a seepy spring just a bit north of the Surprise Canyon, right along Indian Ranch Road.

Minietta Road is the first major access south of CA-190, and it joins up to Nadeau Road, a big rough back-country route that runs along the entire Argus Range. As such, it gets its own stop sign, it’s highly traveled, and it’s an absolutely HORRIBLE stretch of washboard.

We pounded up the grade, trying to find the “right speed” but there just wasn’t one. I think we lost a few fillings due to the rattling.

 

We didn’t see any burros up that way on this trip, but they do frequent the entire Panamint Valley. Even though they are technically non-indigenous species, it’s always a treat to see these desert-adapted critters.

Finally, the road smoothed out a tad and joined up with Nadeau. We worked diligently, trying to follow 3-4 map sources toward where the BLM gal told us there was a well-preserved mining cabin. Our best guess was to follow the “roads” to Overlook City.

I really shouldn’t use the term “roads” or even “tracks”. There has been no maintenance on anything up there for decades, and the tracks are typically made by intrepid 4-wheelers wearing their own paths since the last heavy rain and runoff.

The dirt in most ravines and washes is long gone, replaced by gravel, rocks, and boulders. It’s amazingly slow going, in most places the speed of a walk. But that’s a normal walk, 2-3mph. If you get out and walk, you risk a sprain or break if you’re not very careful, and actual forward progress is more like 1mph. So, onward we crawled.

As I mentioned, the desert can be a capricious place. Eight miles of miserable rock/washboard road, 70 miles from Death Valley and 60 miles from Ridgecrest, we found this 10″x10″ sign, one on each side of the rocky track – – –

We <think> it’s a joke, but in the desert — you can never be quite sure…

The canyon kept getting deeper and rougher. Occasionally some evidence of past mining would crop up.

The washes got deeper, and the road got worse and worse, and it was getting pretty late in a winter day, like 3PM (with dark at 4:30). Not a good time for extra trouble or a breakdown. Finally, we parked Ralph and went on foot further up the draw. Still no structures or cabin.

Oh well, let’s get outa here.

There were some interesting spots along the way, like this odd formation. Petrified tree? I’m not enough of a geologist to make a guess.

So we hiked back down the gravel wash — or what we <thought> was the gravel wash. After a half-mile or so, things weren’t looking as familiar as I thought they should. You know, a certain colored rock, or twisted bush, etc. And (more importantly) Ralph was nowhere in sight. We hiked a bit further. Still no Ralph.

Just on a hunch, I scrambled up a carved-out dirt embankment about eight feet high, just off to our left. It was all that remained of the last huge wall of water that came down the canyon.

Ah, there he was – – – we had walked right past him.

It was really getting late by then, and as we oh-so-carefully picked our way back through the rocks, we made a mutual decision to have dinner “out” that evening.

“How are you going to do that?”, I hear you query. Simple, my dear grasshopper.

PANAMINT SPRINGS RESORT

No mention of Panamint Valley (or Death Valley for that matter) should go without notice of Panamint Springs Resort. Just 50 miles west of Death Valley, the resort happened to be only 20 miles or so away from us. Well, 10 of it was slow and rugged, but the rest was paved.

That night, we were the only ones in the restaurant, but it does fill up at times. Like the weekend before our solitary dinner, when we day-tripped over from Owens Valley for the big Thanksgiving “feed”. This is a wonderful, charitable thing the owners do every year, without fail.

But that evening, there was no crowd. The sun set and we enjoyed our meal. then, our cozy, easy dinner behind us, we drove back down the pitch-black desert roads to our camp, our Howie, and a blissful desert night.

SIMPLE HIKES

Now and then, even a simple local day hike can yield surprises. One day (while I stayed home and blogged), Karin and Siegy went up a nearby small canyon. The scale of this is hard to describe; the canyon is almost invisible, only a mile or less from camp. But in this telephoto shot, it looks massive against the tiny little figures at the bottom of the frame. Such is the scale in the desert — all sizes and distances can be very deceiving.

Inside the canyon, the torture of seasonal water flow has created true art – – – which 84-year-old Siegy was not hesitant to explore.

Exiting the canyon, all that can be seen of camp is the teensie-weensie white dot of Howie — just above the sandy section, in the center of the photo. About a half-mile away (though it looks much farther).

Eventually, we had to part company. Siegy went northward to explore the sand dunes (yet another story), and we toured quickly through Death Valley to go visit relatives in Las Vegas.

But there was still lots of winter remaining, and plenty of time for more roaming.

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STILL CURIOUS?

• Trona Pinnacles
• Surprise Canyon
• Panamint Springs Resort

 

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