Calipidder

Just north of China Lake Naval Weapons Center is a tiny little wilderness area called the Coso Range Wilderness. It’s small, around 50,0o0 acres, with limited access (4WD desert road/old mining road).  There are no facilities, no signs, no visitor center. It’s not a place to stop and gawk at nature from paved RV-sized pullouts [...]

Later on Sunday morning, after our Minietta Mine exploration, we headed out of Panamint Valley and into Death Valley. Our goal was to visit some of the lesser known canyons in the park, and we focused on two of them in the Amargosa range accessed via different points along the Badwater Road.

We spent the first couple days of our trip exploring the southernmost side of Anza Borrego (along S2), basecamped at Agua Caliente Hot Spring. It was nice to camp there since we had the nice hot pools to come back to at the end of the day!
On Monday we checked out two areas I had [...]

One of the most popular hikes in Anza Borrego is Borrego Palm Canyon. But just a short drive south of this canyon is Hellhole Canyon. Hellhole has a similar set of Palm Oasis, a seasonal waterfall with ferns, and a lot of fun rock scrambling.
This was our second visit to Anza Borrego and although our [...]

On the northern side of Anza Borrego there are the remains of an old calcite mine. In operation around WWII, they mined optical calcite for use in gunsights. It didn’t last long, since around the same time a synthetic alternate was discovered, making the mining of calcite financially no longer feasible. What is left are [...]