It's that time of year again! This week Salt Lake City will be overrun with thousands of outdoor gear geeks. We descend on the city to celebrate the Outdoor Retailer…
We made up this hike the night before and it ended up being a great success. Borrowing from several sources we pieced together an awesome dayhike that took us past some great ruins, up a really cool old trail and road, to the top of a desert peak, then down into the depths of an old mine. The loop is about eight miles long with a little under 3k feet of gain.
In order to get to the start of this hike you will need 4WD. If you have 2WD you can still do it but you’ll have to add some distance. Referring to the map below, a 2WD vehicle can get (as of November 2010) to the intersection of Nadeau Rd and Thompson Canyon Rd as long as it is approached from Minnietta Rd. Nadeau Rd to the north and south of this intersection is 4WD only. Just north of this intersection a road angles to the northwest towards the foot of the mountains. This road is 4WD only. If you have a 2WD vehicle leave it parked near the intersection and walk this last ~1/2 mile to the start below.
About 1/2 mile up the road there are the ruins of an old crane/gate looking thing and then an old helicopter pad. Park in here somewhere – there are plenty of places to pull out, turn around, and even camp. From the parking, head south and then west up the canyon where you see old roads and mining tunnels. Follow the old road to the upper tunnel (right around the 0.6-0.7 mile marker on the track below). Just above this tunnel you’ll find old use trails – follow the most obvious one and soon it will become even clearer. You’ll be on the “China Wall Trail”, a trail built by Chinese workers who worked the mine and lived above.
Death Valley has several sets of dunes. The most accessible (and therefore crowded) are the ones a few miles east of Stovepipe Wells. A bit less accessible but still regularly visited are the Eureka Dunes in the northern part of the park. There are more dunes located throughout the park in even less accessible locations. It was one of these locations, the Panamint Dunes, that we visited on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
These dunes aren’t particularly difficult to get to, but the minimum six mile round-trip hike to their edge deters many casual visitors. The road to the parking area isn’t great either – while it’s passable in passenger car I definitely would not feel comfortable taking one on it! 2WD is okay but the blowing sand and washboarding make having a hearty vehicle a must.
From the parking spot the dunes are plainly visible across the desert. They don’t look too far away but the scale of Panamint Valley really messes with distance perception. It is a three mile walk across the desert to reach these dunes. It is dry and sandy and they never seem to be getting any closer. Additionally, the barely detectable uphill slope (1000 feet of gain) wears you down. But eventually you’ll get there.
And when you do – hopefully you’re the only one to have made the entire trek with energy to spare in recent times. If so, you’ll have unbroken, footstep free dunes to play on and photograph. Good luck getting that by Stovepipe Wells! There were two major dune crests that we climbed and played on. We got to experience some fun dune phenomena like singing sand – sounding much like the drone of an airplane in the distance. And the best part of all – we had the dunes to ourselves.
On Thanksgiving Day we decided to play around the Argus Range on the western side of Panamint Valley. Much of this range sits within the boundary of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center but the northern end is free for recreation so we packed the day full of some fun 4×4 and two desert peaks. We needed to burn some energy before that big Thanksgiving dinner in camp.
Darwin is an old mining town and though there are still a few residents it is on the verge of becoming a ghost town. It is accessible via any vehicle using the paved road that exits 190 about 17 miles west of Panamint Valley. It is also accessible via an older route that winds through the Argus range. This ‘Back Road’ approach is dirt and the first mile and a half has been badly washboarded by Death Valley visitors heading to the trailhead for Darwin Falls. After the Darwin Falls trailhead the road becomes heavily degraded in places, requiring high clearance and the occasional dip into 4WD. Of course this is where the fun is.
We followed the road up as it climbed steeply into the northern Argus Range, moving quite slowly and engaging the 4WD. Near the top the road conditions improved greatly and we found a nice place to pull out and park the trucks for our hike up Zinc Hill. Zinc Hill is the prominent peak of the northern end of the Range and it was the target of the day’s first hike.
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