Sat, Mar 25, 2023
|
With: | Matthew Holliman |
It had been 8yrs since my last visit up Goler Wash, taking Tom's old 2-door Jeep. There had been a 3-foot step in the canyon that folks had piled rocks up against, barely adequate to get the Jeep up on that visit. We were happy to find that the wash has had some improvements since then, making it a much easier effort to get all the way up to Barker Ranch. There had been no improvements to the section going to Mengel Pass, now no longer suitable for the likes of Matthew's Subaru that we we had used on our first visit to the area back in 2009.
We had spent the night at the junction of Goler Wash and Windgate Rd, choosing
the location so that we could more easily return to Matthew's car should the
Jeep run into problems in the wash. We did manage to re-break the swaybar
bracket that I'd just had welded, but it wouldn't cause any serious harm. We
left camp at 7a, heading up Goler Wash shortly before sunrise. It would
take us almost an hour and a half (with a few
stops to check out some of
the sights) to reach
Mengel Pass inside
Death Valley NP.
We left a register here while I brought up several options to our
planned course. Myers BM, a summit we were both interested in, was about a mile
and half to the southwest along a ridgeline that looked pretty decent. Matthew
said he'd be fine with that. I then brought up there's a Peak 4,793ft with more
than 750ft of prominence about the same distance to
the southeast.
Matthew was fine with that, too. I figured we could always do Myers BM from
Panamint Valley another time, but Peak 4,793ft would be better done now, so we
went with the second option. The hike along
the connecting ridgeline to
Peak 4,793ft was
fairly pleasant, especially after the climb of the
previous peak. Peak 4,793ft is a rounded bump that lies at the eastern end of
a high plateau, Matthew commenting that it's hard to make this one look
good in a photo. We spent about an hour getting between the two.
The summit offers some pretty wide-ranging views across
the southwest corner of the park and south into the China Lake military
base. Brown Mtn rises prominently to the south across Wingate Wash and Long
Valley. While leaving another
register, I noticed there was yet another
peak, this one to
the northeast and less than a mile away. It was just
after 3:30p, with sufficient daylight remaining, so I asked Matthew if he'd like
to add one more - he would.
I misread the landscape between Peak 4,793ft and Peak 4,632ft as I eagerly
headed off to the east, thinking there was a saddle to cross in that direction.
In fact, the connecting saddle was well to the north and our route to the east
would have us dropping into a canyon draining to the south. It wasn't
a big mistake, since it was a shorter route, Matthew commenting that it might
even have been faster than the out-of-the-way route going north. The drop into
the canyon and the climb out weren't too bad, and the net result was another
hour spent
getting between two summits, even though these two were a
lot closer. It
was now after 4:30p and a check of the GPSr showed we had almost 4mi as the
crow flies to return to the Jeep. We looked a bit askew at each other, knowing
this could be a long return.
It would prove to be much better than we had initially believed. There was very
little elevation gain on the return as we headed northwest, finding a
whole collection of burro trails that would leave us with very little
cross-country travel. It was a delightfully easy romp, dropping
into a wash system with
green grasses and a
red sandstone outcrop coloring the landscape. The wash would take
us out to the road and
Myers Ranch,
a private inholding in the park just east
of Barker Ranch. We took a few
pictures before following the road out,
past
two gates with dozens of
signs along the way to dissuade
curious visitors.
Barker Ranch, the site of the infamous Manson Family hideout, is now a
shell of what it once was. A
stone ranchhouse has been reduced to wall
fragments, a rough-hewn
wood shack just an empty room, and several
other
smaller building
in long-term decay. Yet the place was alive with two large groups of overlanders
who'd brought families and civilization with them to camp here for the weekend.
Gas grills were alight with BBQ dinners in the works, children and dogs playing
and menfolk standing around talking important matters. It seemed a bit
overwhelming and we were quick to make our exit after snapping our photos. We
hiked the remaining
mile of road back down to the Jeep,
returning not long after 6p - pretty good time for four miles, we
thought. We would see the last of the sun as we drove the 4-5mi
back out of Goler Wash to our camp down in Panamint
Valley. A very long day, but a good one...
Continued...
This page last updated: Fri Oct 20 08:24:57 2023
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