Death Valley February, 2018

My buddy Jeff and I decided that we would take a trip to Death Valley. Jeff has a big Arctic Fox camper on his 1 ton Chevy and although he has been up to Alaska and done most of the west, he has never been to Death Valley.  That's probably because he is a fisherman and his trips usually include a fair amount of fishing which this one obviously would not.

The first order of business was deciding which route to take.  Since we both live in San Rafael, California we had two choices: I-5 or 395.  Since the weather was quite nice, we decided to take the more scenic route on 395.  Its only about an hour longer and makes the transportation phase of the journey much more pleasurable.

Off we went, leaving early in the morning of February 5th.  We stopped along the way to check out the Wild Trout section of the Owens River below Pleasant Valley Reservoir. Opps! Maybe we should have brought the rods.  Nice looking river and quite a few folks fishing it.  But this was not a fishing trip so check that off for another time.

There are a couple of camping opportunities just below the reservoir.  One is the Pleasant Valley Pit Campground which is a large open area with a lot of camping space and a lot of people even for February. Quite a few large trailers and RVs that look like they are perched for the long haul.   I think the BLM is now charging a whopping two bucks a night. The much nicer campground is Pleasant Valley Campground which its a county campground ($14/nt. and no geezer discount).  Apparently at the time of the writing of this blog, the campground is closed due the Pleasant Valley Fire. In any case, we needed to get closer to DV, so off we went to the Alabama Hills to find a spot for the night.

I have never been to the Alabama Hills and it's pretty impressive. I won't spend a lot of time talking about the area because there has been quite a bit written on WTW about it.  I will say that its good to get a movie area map that shows the specific places where specific movies have been filmed.  It really brings back memories of being a kid and watching Saturday morning TV of old westerns with the really bad acting that we always loved. Since I pretty much rely on Avenza Maps, if you download the Alabama Hills Movie Map makes it a cinch to navigate right to each area where movies sites are identified. Of course relying on Avenza maps has destroyed my ability to navigate the way real mountain men or women navigate which is to say with intelligence and skill, but I digress.  Anyway the area has nice boondocking sites within the boulder which have been well documented on WTW and especially nice on a Monday in early February during a drought because the weather was great and very few people were camped there.  We found a great spot with no one else around, built a nice fire and had a very quiet stay.

Jeff and his star gazing chair

The next day we headed out early to DV with our destination being Saline Valley Warm Springs via North Pass.  Saline Valley Road was in great condition and easy to drive.  Some interesting sites along the way before the pass.

Mining site near Marble Canyon

We stopped at the top of the pass and had lunch within the pinion pines. At least I'll call them pinion pines but since I never could pass my dendrology classes, I would not rely on my tree identification.  After lunch we headed down North Pass where there was snow and ice but caused us no problems.  After clearing out of the trees, it's down, down and more down into the valley.  All is going well and we were a few miles away from the cutoff to the springs when much to my horror, bells started ringing and the check engine light came on.  @#!$ !!  Then a wrench symbol appeared on my dashboard and the truck crawled to a stop.  This can't be possible! I keep my truck in great shape.  Nothing really appeared to be wrong other than the idiot lights.  The truck was still running  and the power brakes and steering worked, but it would not do anything more than idle.  I shut it down and Jeff stopped behind me and we checked out what we could but found nothing.  I fired it back up and it started.  Although the check engine light remained lit, the wrench was gone.  I put the truck in gear and it headed down the road just fine.  Then the wrench came up again after about a couple of miles and I coasted to stop again.  I did the same thing: stopping and starting-driving and dying until we reached the turnoff for the springs.  I figured that I might as well head to the springs and see what would happen.  We eventually made it to what appeared to be an oasis. We parked and immediately a guy came walking toward us and said: "Hey, I have the same truck and I'm wondering if you experience misses with the engine sometimes when your going 65 or 70 miles per hour?"  To which I said:  "I wish I could hit 65 or 70 right now..." and I explained my problem.  He told me that he had a trouble code reader and he would be happy to hook it up and see what was happening.  Sounded pretty good to me, so I drove up to his camp and we hooked it into the OBD2 port and the error code showed up indicating that the throttle actuator control system was stuck closed.  But then the check engine light went out so fingers crossed that this was some random computer glitch.

We camped a bit away from the springs and set up for the night.

Saline Valley Warm Springs Camp spot

After sun down we built a fire and were just hanging out when something caught my eye in the sky.  It looked like a very bright plane light that seemed to be heading west to east.  Then all of a sudden the light started to grow and grow.  I was almost speechless as the circle of light got bigger and bigger.  By this time I had alerted Jeff to it and we watched as the circle appeared too cover about a third of the southern sky above Saline Valley in a giant circle of light.  After our senses came back after the WTF moment, we figured it was a rocket or missile from one of the military bases in the area.  However I think it was the SpaceX Falcon Heavy firing off a blast to take it out of earth orbit or reposition it somehow.

The next day we took a 10 mile hike up the road toward Steel Pass.  Nice day and a nice hike.  We saw the donkeys around the third springs (donkey springs?) and the miner's cabin in the wash.

Healthy looking wild donkeys 

After the hike we took a soak and the guy with the OBD2 reader, Mike, was there and provided us with a lot information and history of the springs.

On Thursday, we left the springs with fingers crossed my truck would make it out of there.  The original plan was to leave via South Pass and camp in the Joshua Tree forest.  However that was not to be because the check engine light and wrench appeared a couple of miles out of the springs, so we decided the best bet was to head out back over North Pass and see if I could make it to Bishop.  With the truck continually going into limp mode after only a mile or two, I began to wonder if my shutting it down and restarting it would eventually deplete the charge in my battery in which case I would totally be SOL.  However I found that if I kept the rpm's up above 2.5K I could keep the truck going. I hauled out of Saline Valley Road at a pretty good clip thinking that if the going was good, I better get going.  I actually made it over the pass and onto pavement with no limp mode resets.  Phew! I was able to get into Bishop and the Ford dealership just before 1PM.  I gave them the code and they knew what it was but still had to diagnose it.  They promised to diagnose before the 4 PM parts ordering deadline and they kept their promise, confirmed the issue and ordered a new part from LA that they said would arrive the next day and the repairs completed shortly thereafter.  So I pulled what I needed from my camper and we headed off to camp somewhere on the east slope of the Sierras outside of Bishop.

We checked out a few places like Buttermilk Road Dispersed Camping area but decided upon Bitterbrush Campground which is one of the few FS campgrounds open in the winter.  Only two other people were there and compared to the warm weather we had been experiencing, at 8400 feet it was darn cold. But we had a big campfire so it was quite nice to be in the Sierras and hearing the creek running nearby.

The next morning we headed out to Big Pine up to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest at Schulman Grove.  What a great way to kill the day waiting for a truck to get fixed.  It's a nice drive up to Schulman Grove and hiking is really nice.

Scenic view spot on the way to Schulman Grove

Bristlecone Pines

In the afternoon we headed back to Bishop hoping that the truck would be fixed.  Surprise, Surprise...it was.  The service manager is a guy named Tony and he really came through. So a little over 24 hours in Bishop and off we went to camp the night again at the Alabama Hills before heading back into Death Valley.

Back at Alabama Hills

The next day we took off for DV this time taking highway 190 out of Lone Pine.  We were on one of the straight stretches of 190 when all of a sudden the truck started to shake and a loud roaring sound filled the cab.  With the check engine light and wrench still in my memory, my heart sank. I hit the brakes thinking that the engine or tranny must have blown completely. Confused but also worried in that split second that Jeff might rear end me, I saw in my rear view mirror that he too had hit the brakes. And then I saw it:

The pilot must have been practicing his tracking and targeting and we were the targets.  He was extremely low and right over us.  If it wasn't so totally cool, I would have been upset, but I choose to be impressed and relieved the truck was still in one piece. When we stopped a short time latter, Jeff told me he felt the same way and thought his truck had blown something and he hit the brakes as well.  Gotta love DV.

On we went turning off of 190 at the south end of Saline Valley Road and headed for the Joshua Tree Forest to see what we could see.

I love this area.  The Joshua Trees are quite impressive and it's nice to see some green. Since we where there early in the day, we had plenty of time to explore before looking for a campsite.

We parked the Arctic Fox and took some random four wheel drive roads and just explored before coming back down and finding a campsite for the night.  However there were no campfires as a pretty good wind storm picked up just before sundown and continued until about 3am.  We lounged in style in the Arctic Fox through the evening while watching the dust storm blow a gale outside. I've been in a lot worse in DV but I still slept in the lower bunk with the popup down to help with the blowing  around.  After the wind died down at 3am, I put the top back up and found the the outside thermometer showed 21 degrees (F).

After waking up to a sunny but brisk morning and cooking a nice breakfast of egg muffins and pancakes on the Coleman Fold and Go, we took off to explore the area around Ballarat and Golar Canyon.

We headed out of the Joshua Tree Forest the same way we came in and turned east on 190 and then took a right on Panamint Valley Road.  Just after the junction with Wild Rose Canyon Road there is a gravel road which is an alternate route to Ballarat.  There are a number of campsites on this road just before Ballarat.  Taking note of these campsites, we continued through Ballarat and onto Golar Canyon Road eventually parking the Arctic Fox and continuing on in my truck.  We got to the beginning of the real four wheel drive section of the road as it enters the narrow Golar Canyon and parked the truck and hiked around.  I would love to four wheel the canyon into DV and one day I'll do it, but not this trip and probably not in this truck. I don't really have the clearance for the more serious four wheeling.

Parked just before the entrance to the narrow Golar Canyon

Looking back down to the entrance to the canyon 

Golar Canyon

Once done exploring we headed back to one of the campsites we found closer to Ballarat.  We started a fire, but the wind kicked up again and with the embers flying all over the place, we decided to play it safe and we put it out.  Even though it was a Sunday night, the wind did not stop the good residents of Ballarat from setting off quite a number of large scale fireworks exploding in a dazzling display of desert pyrotechnics.

Sunset near Ballarat

That was our last night in the desert.  We headed home the next morning.  A nice week to spend in early February.

Thanks for making it to the bitter end!