Death Valley Off-Road Trip - Three Days In The Valley

After a good night's rest, we gathered the group for breakfast at the Ranch and headed out of town to the Skidoo Town Site, via Stovepipe Wells. The Skidoo Town Site was founded after a gold strike in 1905 and was listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1974. Once the home of a booming community of more than 700 residents, which included a telephone line and stagecoach stop, the previously active town eventually withered away as the 15-stamp mill and mine ceased production after a decade of activity. Skidoo was also the home of the only hanging in Death Valley, probably contributing to the town's reputation as a peaceful community.

From Skidoo, we headed south to the town of Ballarat, a thriving supply base from 1897 to 1917 but now a ghost town. It was once the Inyo County seat for the Death Valley region and even had its own post office, but today only a few original buildings remain to be enjoyed by visitors. Today it is still the gateway into the Panamints, and our last stop before traversing the Panamint Range.

After leaving Ballarat, we began climbing the alluvial fan into the Goler Canyon, only to discover that the once-challenging Goler Wash, which on our last visit had several distinct waterfall obstacles, had recently been graded and was smoother than the 405 on our commute into the office. At least the scenery was slightly better than the concrete jungle we are accustomed to. Out of the canyon, we took the Barker Ranch detour to check out the capture site where Charles Manson was found hiding under a sink in October 1969. The Ranch is an interesting place to poke around and offers travelers some refuge from nasty weather, along with shelves stocked with basic supplies, but the rodents and ghosts still lay claim as the primary residents and caretakers of the property.

Moving on from Barker Ranch, we climbed to the top of Mengel Pass, where we paid our respects to Carl Mengel, the one-legged miner who rests under a rock cairn grave at 4,328 feet. Carl led a measly life, founding one claim after another in the Panamints, only to have them go bust. He died poor in 1944 and forever stands testament to the hardships and desperation people were willing to endure in the region, in hopes of a big payoff-kind of like being a magazine editor.

From Mengel Pass, we descended into the vast and beautiful Butte Valley, marked by the 900-foot-tall Striped Butte, an outcropping of rock so named for its unusual sedimentary makeup, which is significant and noteworthy because the majority of the surrounding rock is granite. In 1930, a Butte Valley prospector known as Panamint Russ built the small stone Geologist Cabin, that, like the Barker Ranch, is a refuge for backcountry travelers, although it is much better maintained and stocked with goods should you need them.

It was starting to get late, and as the afternoon entered the golden hour of light, we picked up our pace and headed eastward to the West Side Road, which would bring us back north to our base of Furnace Creek. With only enough time in the day for a taste of what Death Valley has to offer, we were looking forward to the adventure that Day 3 would bring us. (Editor's Note: You can follow the second half of this installment in next month's issue.)

Our favorite guidebooks for any of our backcountry exploits in Southern California and Death Valley is Backcountry Adventures: Southern California by Peter Massey and Jeanne Wilson. Full of history and trail information, the guide offers explorers step-by-step trail directions and includes GPS waypoints. We also carry along the invaluable DeLorme Southern & Central California Atlas and Gazetteer, which is the most comprehensive map book we have run across. Both books are part of a series that includes other regions and are available at online retailers, such as 4x4books.com, or from your local bookseller.-Sean P. Holman