Sat, Mar 14, 2009
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With: | Matthew Holliman |
Leaving San Jose shortly before 6p, we took more than nine hours to reach our destination. After gassing up in Ridgecrest, we drove on to Trona and Ballarat before heading south on the excellent dirt road to Goler Wash. As expected, things deteriorated at the wash. The canyon is extremely narrow in sections and it seemed almost fantastical to hope that a road could be maintained up it. Any sort of flash flood must certainly wipe out huge sections of the rocky road where the wash narrows so. Driving it at night added additional challenges as well as giving it an other-worldly appearance. We had no idea how high the rocks walls enclosing us were, and no idea what would come up around the next bend in this ever-twisting road. We came to the first of several forks after a few miles, staying left until a second fork was reached. We paused here while considering what to do. Matthew suggested we take the better looking right fork. I felt the crummier left fork was heading in the prefered direction. Since I was driving we headed left without much debate, fortunately finding it the correct choice. We stopped momentarily at the National Park boundary sign where the road seemed to end. We found a sharp left turn which took us down and across a shallow creek, then continued north into the park. Things grew progressively rougher, but we managed to get the Forester and ourselves over or around the obstacles in our way. We came across several more forks, and using the stars to guide us in a generally northward direction, we made the correct choices, though not without a few small hitches. It was fairly slow going as both the size of the boulders and the number of undercarraige "incidences" increased. Several times we had to get out to examine the route before deciding to continue on. We were about half a mile from Mengel Pass, having just banged and bumped our way over a few nasty spots, when we came across a larger problem that had us crying uncle. It was after 3a and I was worn out from the driving. A convenient pull-out made the choice easy and we stopped here for the night. Matthew slept outside next to the car while I slept on a flat spot in the middle of the road. I was happy to find in the morning that I had not been run over during what little remained of the night.
We awoke after 7a, already quite light out and
sunrise imminent. Matthew might
have preferred more than three and half hours sleep, but I was quickly up and
about making noise. We packed up our sleeping gear and ate a quick breakfast
before heading out not long after 7:30a. The morning was chilly but ideal for
hiking, and the weather would be fine for most of the day, neither too hot nor
too cold.
It was less than ten minutes to reach Mengel Pass where we paused to
take in the view of
Butte Valley to the north and the small
commemorative
plaque to Carl Mengel placed more than sixty years ago.
We followed
the road north as it drops party way into Butte Valley,
and stashed some unneeded Gatorade
off the side of the road before
heading cross-country for a shortcut to
Russell Camp.
There were several flags flying and a couple of guys hanging out at the camp
as we walked by, a simple wave our only contact with them. We continued up the
side canyon
past the end of the road, hiking up until we reached a saddle low
on Manly's East Ridge (route "A" in the DPS guide). It was 8:30a by this time,
and time for the elevation gain to begin in earnest.
The ridge follows the old National Monument boundary, marked by a
handful of
fading signs. A faint use trail was found in places with
ducks scattered along the route, not always helpful. We spent an hour
climbing the ridge to the
main crest of the Panamints,
then another 20 minutes south
along the crest to reach
the summit blocks of Manly Peak. The DPS register box
was located at the base of these blocks.
I had no inkling that Manly possessed a challenging summit block, unlike
Matthew who had carried a short rope for just this purpose. There appeared to
be two options for surmounting the block. One involved an airy step across a
two-foot gap followed by a steep climb for ten feet on granite with minimal
holds. It seemed dicey at best. The other option was a 20-foot crack/chimney
arrangement that looked somewhat easier and far less exposed. After Matthew
spent a minute to size up the easier option he gave way and let me
shimmy my
way up chimney-fashion. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. From the top of the
chimney it's and easy climb to the summit along a ledge exposed on one side.
The views were pretty fine, including some of the snow-covered peaks in the
Sierra and many of the other summits in
the Panamints,
the Argus Range, and the Black Mountains.
While I took some pictures from the top of the surrounding views and the
summit benchmark,
Matthew got out his rope and gear for
a belay assist up the
chimney. Voices announcing the approach of another party could be heard off to
the north. Matthew spent some time unraveling the rope while we debated the
best way to get him up safely with a belay device and one carabiner, our only
gear. While trying to toss the rope and belay device to me, Matthew threw
short and got both wedged in the hole below. I laughed as he
crawled around
trying to free it, both of us obviously rusty in our ropework. After several
abortive efforts to rig up something to belay him from above (his carabiner
was needed to hold his simple web harness together), I downclimbed the
chimney and gave him a fireman's belay
from below.
It worked nicely. I went
back up a second time in order to descend
the alternate route with a short jump across
the gap.
The psychology behind why I would bother to do this might
be complex, but the simple answer was "because it was fun."
Meanwhile, the other party appeared, three adults, one teenager, and a
seven year-old. They were all members of the Inskeep clan, a family of climbers
going back to the 1960s. The elder Jon Inskeep, who's climbs are
recorded in
the older DPS archives, was not present but waiting back at the truck where
they had started from. Two of his sons and a son-in-law were present, all around
50 years of age. The other two were grandsons, including 7yr-old Reid who had
the same eagerness for climbing as his dad and granddad. Dad told us that he
had first climbed Manly in 1969 at the age of twelve and this was his second
visit, now forty years later. They had brought their
own rope but were happy to use the one we had in place.
Reid made it up in fine
form. The others all went up without using the rope which was packed away after
Reid descended. They were still playing around at the summit when Matthew and I
left them around 10:40a.
There was some lingering snow on the
north slope of Manly,
but nothing to
hinder easy progress up or down. We followed the same route
down
to
Russell Camp, stopping only briefly for a few pictures of the
desert flowers emerging
on the slopes. We took a short tour of the camp, the flags and visitors now
gone. This is a public use facility, larger and more charming than a few of the
others I've come across in the park. There are many rooms, including a
kitchen/
dining room, a
honeymoon suite
(just a small, empty room), a
workshop, an
outhouse, a
doghouse, and even an
indoor shower. The shower and
kitchen tap were plumbed from an
external tank filled by a trickling
spring. The site is wired for electricity, but I didn't see any evidence of a
working generator to power the few
appliances. The walls were
covered in postcards and
reading materials going back many decades.
Rat droppings were evident in most of the rooms, but not overwhelmingly so as
I've seen elsewhere.
After leaving Russell Camp we descended back to the main road,
picking up
Once on the
We spent a short time debating which route to take back, deciding our ascent
route would probably be the fastest way back to the car. When we were about
halfway down the West Ridge my ongoing internal struggle with the decision
reached the vocalization point when I announced, "I think I want to vote we
go back the other way." Matthew had no objection, probably because he relished
the idea of the disagreeable canyon as little as I did.
Our uncharted course was off the south side of the saddle we had climbed to
in reaching the West Ridge. Much of the route could be seen from Needle's
summit and it had the obvious advantage of looking less disagreeable. It
would also involve about 200ft less gain though longer by a mile or two.
For the most part it was an easy and pleasant return route. The ground was
smoother traveling, and the broad valley we hiked through felt refreshingly
remote and isolated. We found that burros had made an entire network of trails
through these valleys around the Panamint and Argus ranges, many of them more
efficient that the typical human use trail. A lone burro was found in the
bottom of the valley, unnerved by our presence. It would trot ahead for 40-50
yards before turning to watch us, then repeating the manuever as we got closer.
This went on for ten or fifteen minutes before it finally veered away from our
intended route. We used the
It was 4:45p before we returned
Our day was far from over. We drove on to Stovepipe Wells for a short break
before heading into Cottonwood/Marble Canyons for the trailhead to Canyon Point.
It was dark when we entered the mouth of the canyon where the road begins to
deteriorate. For ten miles the road plies its way up the canyon, almost all of
it directly in the wash bed. The DPS guide points out that the condition of
the road is highly variable depending on the timing of the last flooding. We
were surprised to see almost a dozen cars in the canyon, most of them in the
first mile before Marble Canyon splits off from Cottonwood Canyon. A number of
folks had set up tents in the wash up against the steep canyon walls, evidently
this canyon is a popular attraction. We
managed to drive in past all of these other vehicles and within a mile of the
trailhead at the south end of the canyon, though not without a great deal of
stressful driving, very much like the previous evening. It was 10p before we
called it quits and set up our sleeping bags under the stars once again. There
was no doubt that the driving to some of these DPS peaks is a much tougher
prospect than actually climbing them.
Continued...
our stash
of Gatorade and continuing east down into Butte Valley. Next up was Needle
Peak, lower but no less effort to reach with the extra walking required because
we couldn't reach the usual trailhead in our car. We chose route "A" from the
DPS guide as it seemed the most direct route. The lower part from Butte Valley
to a
SSE-heading canyon,
but here the fun stopped for
a while. The climb up this rocky wash is simply nasty. Not "hard" nasty, but
sloggy, disagreeable crud kinda nasty. We didn't speak much for the 40 minutes
we spent hiking up it, only to comment with the simple but descriptive, "This
sucks."
West Ridge
the nastiness was left behind, but the scrambling did
not improve to anything memorable. At least we had find views. We spent an
additional 40 minutes climbing up and over
a false summit to
the highpoint
where we arrived just before 2p. There is a good view of
the Panamints from
this point and many other peaks and ranges in the surrounding area. Many of
those to
the north we were familiar with, but there seemed to be
range upon range of peaks
looking south that we could not identify.
There was a USGS benchmark along with a register dating back
to 1981.
Ours was the
first entry in almost a year.
burro trails to traverse around a buttress, out of
our broad valley and into the adjacent Goler Wash. During the traverse I was
startled out of my hiking stupor by the sound of hissing in front of me. A
large
rattler
had felt our feet pounding the trail and started up with his
alarming rattle to warn us away. It worked quite well. I suspect it works
equally well on burros, too. We took a few pictures before leaving the
rattlesnake in peace and continuing on. Once in Goler Wash there were
long stretches of
burro trail
running parallel to the road that were preferable
to hiking on the road, and we took to the road only for the last mile or so
when the trail struck off in another direction.
to the car, still plenty of daylight remaining.
We set up the Sunshower atop a large boulder off the side of the road and
took turns at a hot shower, followed by a few cold Mikes and corned beef
sandwiches. Yum. The drive out was not as harrowing as the drive in the night
before in the dark, but we still managed to take at least one wrong turn that
highlighted the luck we'd had in finding our way in. Back in Panamint Valley we
stopped to take a photo of Manly Peak from
the west.
As Matthew stepped out of
the car he said rather casually, "Hey, there's a snake here." This
second rattlesnake made no noise, no movement initially,
just lying there fat
and lazy, playing possum. It eventually
moved away
when we got too close for
its comfort. (Famous last words: "So, just how far can these things jump to
strike you?")
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Manly Peak
This page last updated: Thu Apr 26 17:41:00 2018
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