Continued...
Laura had mentioned wanting to visit Trona Pinnacles during a weekend desert
trip to the Panamint Valley area, so I had planned to do some easy peaks in
the adjacent Spangler Hills in the early morning before her arrival. It wasn't
until the night before that she realized she had to work this weekend, forcing
her to cancel. Since Iris was still planning to meet me around 11a, I stuck
with the
original plan. All the day's peaks are found on the periphery of Searles Lake,
a dry lakebed that continues to be commercially mined for borax and other
minerals. The vast lakebed lies between the two sections of the China Lake
Naval Weapons Center, with Trona and the Searles Valley Mineral Company located
on the northwest shore. I had spent the night camped at the BLM's Trona
Pinnacles Recreation Lands, primitive but perfectly legal camping.
End BM / Peak 2,859ft
The Spangler Hills lie between Ridgecrest and Searles Valley, a low set of
desert hills that are home to BLM OHV recreation. The
and trails
throughout the area make it disagreeable to most peakbaggers, but I've found
on my two previous visits that I had the place to myself on weekdays. Both peaks
can be easily reached from either Randsburg Wash Rd (the road connecting the
two China Lake WC areas) which splits the Spangler Hills, or from Pinnacle Rd
which runs on the east and southeast side of the range. I used the latter since
it was nicely situated next to . There is a set of train
tracks that runs parallel to the road, connecting Trona to Union Pacific lines
further south. One train came by during the night, but otherwise it's pretty
quiet. I crossed after shortly before 7a,
towards End BM, about a mile and half away. There are no
real difficulties encountered anywhere in the range, almost any gully or
ridgeline will do to reach its summits. I took about 45min to reach
where I found , cell service (from
Ridgecrest, 13mi to the west), and nice views overlooking Searles Valley, the
Spangler Hills and far to , the Southern Sierra. I left a
register under the here. Though there was some rain back in
December, there has been nothing since and most of the desert remains
predominantly brown, waiting for a little more precipitation to help things
along.
I spent most of an hour crossing a and climbing to
the second summit, unnamed Peak 2,859ft with more than 500ft of prominence. I
ascended , a modest gradient with firm footing, much like
the first peak. I left atop this one as well before
heading off an alternative ridgeline to the south. As it was only 9a and I had
two hours before I needed to get back, I took that
followed along Pinnacles Rd for the last mile. I marveled at the
in the full light of the
day, trying to pick out the highest from the west. A number of lower pinnacles
looked quite difficult and I wondered if there was much interest in rock
climbing here. I suspect the poor rock quality discourages folks from trying.
As I was returning just after 10:30a,
Iris pulled up in her car not 30 seconds before me - impressive timing!
The Pinnacles
We drove together in Iris's car to the shoulder on the southwest side of the
highest point. The easy class 3 scramble takes only a few minutes, the summit
providing from which
this other-worldly landscape of
exposed tufa towers from an expansive, shallow lake, long gone. Someday it might
be fun to come back and climb some of the other points, but today was not that
day.
Empasse BM / Slate BM
Back at the van, we spent half an hour driving our vehicles back out on the 5mi
of washboarded road to SR178. Then north to the upper end
of Searles Valley where the Argus and Slate Ranges converge at a pass leading
into Panamint Valley. We turned off a few miles before the pass to park one car
at a quarry and then drove together to for a shuttle hike of
the two northernmost summits of the Slate Range. There is
to start on
from the pass, mostly used by burros but appearing to have been built by humans,
though there is no signage, no marking on the maps, and we had no idea where it
actually goes. We turned off where it drifts away from the main crest and seems
to contour around the north side of the range. The cross-country along the crest
is easy enough, taking about half an hour the
and then another 50min for . All
along the route there are decent views of both to the
left and to the right. As we dropped
back down from Slate BM to the quarry where Iris's car was left, we came across
a
just outside the quarry. It turned out to be the carcasses
of perhaps a dozen coyotes that had been killed and left here to rot, the bones
and other pieces slowly dispersed by rats and other carrion feeders. It would
seem that someone did not take a liking to the coyotes roaming these hills...
Peak 4,066ft
With a few hours' daylight remaining, we decided to tag a bonus peak up
Homewood Canyon Rd in the Argus Range. The paved road leads up from SR178 to an
isolated community north of Trona. There are perhaps a dozen residents living
in tough conditions up here. A fire in the canyon some years ago only made the
collection of on the properties
. Amongst all this are a few more stately-looking homes,
freshly built and decidedly
out-of-place here. While we saw no residences during our short visit, a few
came out to see what was going on. We drove up towards the end
of the development to climb unnamed Peak 4,066ft above the Ruth Mine. We went
up a cross-country route , but the easier route uses an
old mining road from to a saddle on
of the summit. We
found this on the way down as we were making a loop of it. We spent a little
over an hour covering the 2.5mi route. There are a few other similar summits in
the area, but we left those for another time.
It would be nearly dark by the time we had driven back out to SR178, showered,
and then
onto Ballarat in Panamint Valley. Matt showed up only a few minutes after Iris
and I had gotten there, making for a small party of three for a little evening
revelry after the end of an enjoyable day. More on tap for tomorrow...
Continued...