Tom had recently purchased a 22yr-old Jeep Wrangler whose purpose was to open up some backcountry roads to adventures not reachable by his Honda Element. He readily agreed when I suggested Death Valley might be a good place to try it out. For my own part, I had several dozen P1Ks in the area that I was interested in, most of which could be more easily reached with such a vehicle. Some of my first proposals, such as Titus Canyon, were poo-poohed as not challenging enough - the Element could easily drive that one. So I set about finding yet more challenging roads that would give Tom a chance to see what the Jeep could do. One of the ones I settled on was Goler Wash/Mengel Pass. I had been up this rough road with Matthew in his Outback five years earlier to do the DPS summits of Manly and Needle. We had gotten as far as the top of Mengel Pass but stopped there because the north side appeared too rough and we doubted we could get back up it. Since that time, a heavy thunderstorm had dumped volumes of water in the canyon and transformed the road into something less navigable. Adam Jantz was of the opinion it was undriveable whereas Tom had read that someone had fixed the worst of the damage by removing some large rocks. I didn't really know whether we could get up the canyon or not even in the Jeep, but at least Tom would be unlikely to complain that it was too easy. We would get our money's worth, to be sure.
Having spent the night at Ballarat, we were up around 6a for what I expected
would be a pretty full day. I had three P1Ks in mind along with Striped Butte,
all located in or near Butte Valley on the north side of Mengel Pass. We did
not get an early start because we found one of the Jeep tires flat even before
we set out. Somewhere on the way to Ballarat the Jeep had picked up a shard of
metal which had allowed 
the tire to go flat overnight. We did not take
this as a good omen. Luckily we had a 
repair kit
(in fact, two - Tom and I were each carrying one).
Tom hadn't used it before but I had become quite familiar with it from some half
dozen patches I'd done on vehicles over the years. We were delayed some 45min
before we were ready, packed and on our way.
Much of the road south of Ballarat is in excellent condition that any vehicle
could drive, thanks to an active
mine some 4-5mi down the road. In fact, plenty of
vehicles presumeably from the mine had come by at odd hours during the night.
Whatever they are extracting, it seems important (or at least profitable)
to continue operations 24hrs a day. We wondered if the workers were
coming on and off shifts or perhaps just sneaking away for a few drinks at a
watering hole in Trona. Past the mine the road gets a little rough, but still
manageable by anything other than a low clearance vehicle. We brought Karl's
Element the fifteen miles south to the mouth of Goler Wash where we
left it
in case it should be needed if we ran into trouble - it would save us the long
walk back to Ballarat.
We piled into the Jeep and headed up Goler Wash. We weren't 15min up the canyon
before finding 
the crux
at what we called The Waterfall. Someone had piled up
some rocks at the base of a 3-foot step to make things easier, but we were less
than convinced. Karl and I got out to help guide Tom up (and photograph the fun).
The engine revved, the clutch slipped and the Jeep bounced like a toy car, but
it bullied 
its way up in the end. We would spend another hour making the
rest of our way 
up the canyon to Mengel Pass, stopping only briefly to
check out an old 
mining cabin still used for overnight visitors -
hantavirus, anyone? A 
lone burro
did not seem much troubled by our passing, watching us passively as
we slowly puttered by. We were happy to find no further serious problems.
We stopped at 
the pass
to make a visual check of the route down the north side
before committing the jeep in that direction. There is a section perhaps 30yds
in length that gave us some concern, knowing that it would be tougher going back
up than it would be going down. We at least had the knowledge that there was an
easier, albeit longer way out if necessary, adding more than three hours and
140mi to the return time. Once past this 
second crux
the route grows increasingly
easier as we descended to the bottom of Butte Valley. This picturesque valley
on the east side of the Panamints was not as deserted as I had expected. A car
was parked outside the Geology Cabin (we would revisit with both the cabin and
its overnight visitors later) and throughout the day there were perhaps a half
dozen other visitors touring through by jeep or motorcycle. As far as we could
tell, all of these came up the easier route from the east starting at Death
Valley.
With Manly Peak rising majestically on our left as we entered the Butte Valley,
talk turned to this DPS summit. I had visited it some years earlier, but neither
Karl nor Tom had climbed it. Tom had planned to follow me on whatever obscurities
I had picked out whereas Karl was more eager to tackle Manly
because "It's on the list!" Tom found himself lured by Karl's siren call. Making
plans on the fly, I suggested they might go off and climb Manly while I tackled
Striped Butte, a small standalone summit rising from the floor of the valley. It
wasn't one of the P1Ks I had on the agenda, but it was interesting-looking peak
and gets mention in Zdon's book. I
knew it would take me far less time to do Striped Butte, but I was more than
willing to change plans especially since it was Tom's jeep. Future jeep trips
would undoubtedly require keeping the driver happy. And besides, I've long given
up the idea that I've paid a last visit to an area by "clearing it out." In
fact, I'm more than happy to find reasons to come back. And so they dropped me
off on the south side of the butte before 
heading further south
towards Manly.
I kept track of their progress as much as I could in order to see where they
ended up parking. I would make my way in that direction after I was finished with
Striped Butte.
Near where I was dropped off could be found a lone couple in an elaborate camper
van where they'd 
set up shop for the past few days. They were busy
packing stuff up as I passed by but would be more than an hour in packing it all
away. As the name suggests, 
Striped Butte is composed of a colorfully
striped array of folded rock layers giving it an interesting look (it was
originally named Curious Butte). The rock is primarily metamorphic limestone.
The route up the 
South Ridge is easy enough at class 2, taking all of
about 30min to reach 
the summit some 500ft above the floor of Butte
Valley (more like 900ft on the lower east side). A large register container
holding 
several books filled with names dating back about a decade
attests to the peaks high popularity. There were simply too many entries to
bother trying to photograph them all. From the summit I could easily discern the
major peaks around Butte Valley - Manly to 
the south, Needle and
Sugarloaf to 
the east, Gold Hill to 
the north. The far higher
wall that forms the Panamint crest dominates the view to 
the west. To
the southwest could
be seen the genteel-looking Redlands Pass through which Manly and Rogers passed
on their way back to Death Valley in 1848.
Knowing I'd have plenty of time, I descended Striped Butte to 
the north
(also class 2) and then circled around the east side to my starting point at the
southern end. The couple were just finishing their packing and drove off a few
minutes after I'd passed them for a second time. I continued south on the gravel
road towards the base of Manly Peak. I had not been able to pick out exactly
where they had parked, having lost sight of the jeep after it reached a
distinctive clump of rocks. Rather than follow a straight line path across the
desert I followed the road because I was interested to know if I'd be able to
tell their tire tracks from the others when I reached a junction. This might
help later when I tried to figure out which road branch they'd ended up on.
Sadly, I was
unable to - there was just too much recent traffic on the road and my tracking
skills are lacking. When I reached the clump of rocks I found the road branching
in several directions. I started up what I thought was the more likely route,
but soon realized they might drive back out from another branch of the road and
miss me entirely. Butte Valley is a big place and it would be easy to get
separated. Shouting across the valley to be heard was unlikely. What to do?
I decided to hang out atop the rock clumps and wait for them to drive by. An
hour went by as I contemplated the fate of the Death Valley 49ers who had to wait
for Manly and Rogers to return and rescue them (most of them, it turns out, found
their own way out). I moved to a higher bit of rocks where I could get a better
view to scan the north side of Manly, looking for them descending the mountain
or discovering where they'd left the jeep. In the shadow of the mountain at
Hatchet Spring I saw what might be the jeep or possibly a big rock. I went off
to investigate. I kept looking back over my shoulder lest they might come driving
back another route. Before I could ID the jeep I noticed Karl descending the last
part of the mountain down to the spring. A few minutes later I caught up with
them 
driving back down.
It was almost 1:30p now, the Manly hike taking longer than we'd guessed - it's
higher than it looks and the summit is actually set back from what appears to be
the highpoint when viewed from the north. While we had plenty of daylight,
we still had to negotiate the return over Mengel Pass and down Goler Wash. Doing
those in the dark seemed ill-advised. I suggested we leave Gold Hill and the
other P1Ks for another visit and instead, assuming we successfully make it back
to Mengel Pass, that we visit an easily reached, unnamed summit just east of the
pass. On our way back, we stopped at the 
Geology Cabin at Anvil Spring
to pay it a visit. Both 
inside and out, it was the best maintained
cabin I'd seen among
a number of those sprinkled throughout Death Valley. Half an hour later, as
we neared the crux, we spotted a woman and child walking down the road. They
were part of the foursome that had spent the night at the cabin and had gotten
their less-capable vehicle stuck trying to get past the crux. We had no idea
where they thought they might get to on foot,
but we suggested they might join us to
see if we could collectively get the car unstuck. They were a somewhat odd group,
the woman and her boyfriend in their 40s (perhaps) and her two children around
10-12yrs old. The children were both annoying, appearing unused to discipline
in their lives. The boyfriend would not look you in the eye when he was talking,
but rather ponder off in space as he propounded on whatever thought he was
forming out loud. The woman appeared a little annoyed by it all. As well she
should be. They were heading up over Mengel Pass based on the boyfriend's
recollection of what he remembered from "some years ago." The vehicle, a GMC
Jimmy, looked insufficient but had performed remarkably to
get it where it was without any damage that we could see. They hoped we might be
able to tow them over the pass but that was out of the question. For one, their
vehicle blocked any route around it, and secondly, the 4-cylinder jeep would have
enough trouble on its own. We suggested they might try backing the car back down
and exit the way they had come. They weren't sure they had enough gas to do
this, but running out of gas closer to the pavement was certainly better than
staying stuck or trying further to get over the pass (they said they'd been
working at it for two hours before we arrived). We had some spare gas, and with
that enticement he agreed to heading back. The car was extracted and turned
around. Tom then 
drove his jeep bravely over the rather large rocks,
bouncing all over the place, past the worst obstacles before
stopping the jeep against an
immovable rock on the side. The new bumper he'd had installed got tweaked, but
we managed to get it over the worst of it. We then gave the others
some gas from our spare can and went our separate ways.
We paused atop 
Mengel Pass a short ways further, getting out for a
second hike and to let the jeep rest a bit. 3mi ESE of the pass is the impressive
Needle Peak. Between the two is a 
3mi-long ridgeline that makes a
direct route between the two a little difficult. But the highpoint of this ridge
is only 3/4mi from the pass and makes for an easy climb. We took a little less
than 30min to 
hike to the top over sand and rock terrain. At
the top we found an 
NPS boundary marker and a steel post
probably left by the surveyors, but no register that we could find. It had nice
views of both Manly Peak to 
the west and Needle Peak to
the east. It was 3:30p before we 
returned to the pass and
more than an hour before
we'd returned to Karl's Element at the mouth of Goler Wash. Despite the change
in plans and not actually reaching any of the P1Ks I had targeted, we all thought
it was fun day. The others got to tag another DPS summit and I had a good time
exploring Butte Valley. And we got some lessons on driving, and driving in the
jeep on rough roads (no seat belts in the back makes that a bit tricky when the
bouncing starts). We returned to Ballarat to spend a second night there. More
tough driving was on tap for the next day in Pleasant Canyon...
Continued...