there is canyoneering if you into that.

Get "Hiking Death Valley" by Michel Digonnet. We used his book for ten days of fun in the valley in October.

Edgewood wrote:Get "Hiking Death Valley" by Michel Digonnet. We used his book for ten days of fun in the valley in October.

Thanks. Have it already. I also just got Zdon's Dessert Summits. I still don't know if I want to go biking or hiking or both if I try Scwaub Pk. I've wanted to ride either Suoth Park or Pleasant Canyons over in Panamint Vally. I've been lazy lately though and not sure how much is biting off more than I can chew.

Unfortunately I'm limitted to places I can get to in a cheapo rental car.

kevin trieu wrote:there is canyoneering if you into that.

One of these days. There was a canyon on the west side of the Panamints I'd asked about in hopes of getting up Telescope. I believe it was Jail. I was informed it requires a number of rappels. Not anything I can do alone. But I'm certainly interested.

I think I'll just take both bikes and hiking gear, see what looks like fun when I get there.

We thought about bringing bikes but decided to skip it and just hike. Why? .. We can ride anytime but to hike up something like Grotto canyon is special indeed.

Edgewood wrote:We thought about bringing bikes but decided to skip it and just hike. Why? .. We can ride anytime but to hike up something like Grotto canyon is special indeed.

Actually, if you're willing to put in the work and aren't hung up on single track riding, there is some fun stuff for MTB'ing. The one I really liked was Trail Canyon on the east side of the Panamints. There was a lot of hike-o-bike on the climb but coming down is really fun. It's like the bike is floating on the gravel. Echo Cyn was an esier ride. I also did a loop from Daylight Pass, down to the Nevada boreder, up to Chloride Cliff and back to the pass. Also did Teakettle Jct to Lost Burro Mine and another canyon in Hidden Valley.

Man, I love that place.

I drove my Scion TC up to Thorndike campground, which is the small one in between the charcoal kilns and mahogany flats, in June 09. From that point up your car should have some decent clearance or you could have problems and I think it was better to stop there.

Saturday morning, from a point in the Amargosa Range:





Looks like the snow is still down as low as 6000 feet.

Dingus Milktoast wrote:Great shots Dayhiker, esp the 2nd one. The colors on the floor of the sink are cool

What were you doing up there may I ask? Amargosa Range huh.... that's quite a span of possibilities!

Thanks. For showing the snow conditions, I could have cropped the second one as well, or used a closer-in shot, but I looked at how the valley floor looked and said, "No way."

I was with Rick Kent, doing yet another exploratory descent in Death Valley's Black Mountains (part of Amargosa Range, as you know). This canyon is just southeast of the Artists Drive loop, but it's not one of the canyons inside the loop.

Here is a KML file that can be opened in Google Earth. I created it using Visual Basic code that I wrote: (Download and then open in GE.)

I will eventually have to delete it because my web-space account has limitations on total bytes.

It shows the canyon we did on Saturday, when I took the photo I posted earlier. The blue track is one I manually created beforehand for the canyon watercourse, and I included it instead of our actual GPS zig-zag track through the canyon. (Poor GPS reception in some places inside the canyon, of course.) The two red tracks are our actual approach and finish on Saturday.

The waypoints R01, R02, etc. are the 15 rappels we did. We had to build anchors for all; there were no traces of previous human presence at any of the drops.

The photo is from the waypoint "CYN APPR SDL," which is here: http://www.mytopo.com/maps.cfm?mtlat=36.33719&mtlon=116.74950