Racetrack Valley Trip Report April 10-12

Attendance was a little on the low side, but me and my son we’re still going to have a weekend in the desert.
Friday – Battle cry for the day was ‘Yeew! Bug splat’ as we made our way from LA to Baker. It’s unfortunate but the bugs need to keep a minimum height above ground level if they’re going to survive.

Stopped of at Ashford Mills for an early lunch. Pleasant enough day time temperatures in the mid to upper 70s.

Also stopped at Badwater for the obligatory been there, done that picture.

Weather was definitely varied as it was clearly raining on the other side of the Panamint Mountains as we headed north.
We made it into Homestake Camp a little later than planned, just in time to catch some unsettled weather. Several extremely loud claps of thunder – seriously close enough that you didn’t want to be playing with aluminum tent poles, or sitting in camp chairs. First piece of real wheeling was a night run out to Lippencott Mine - which gave rise to the other battle cry – ‘Why walk when you’ve got a Land Rover?’. That was fun – nothing difficult other than trying to find the roads at night.

Bonus – Saturday morning was a repeat of the run out to Lippencott Mine – Upper and Lower.

Not mentioned in any of the guides or maps was this old car/truck chassis, with real wood spoked wheels!

This is looking back into Racetrack Valley from Lippencott Mine (Upper).

One thing that really struck me was just how much effort was put into opening up these mines, building roads, rail tracks, mills and all the other infrastructure just to scrape a few cubic yards of rock out of the ground.

Apparently cowboys did wear boots. And the steel for those rails came from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Sticking with the itinerary, we then retraced our route and headed off to the Racetrack.

I’m not sure AJ (Andrew Joseph) was convinced until he
saw this! One gripe is that some knuckleheads seem to enjoy removing the rocks from their natural resting place(s). As rocks, they have no value once moved from their tracks, and this completely destroys the mystique of this place.

Not to be outdone, we decided to do what shouldn’t ever be done and staged a photoshoot on the playa with four Land Rover Discoverys and a Range Rover Sport.

Remember this is still only Saturday morning and we’ve done all this so far. Anyways, we then headed off into Hidden Valley, in search of Lost Burro Mine. Definitely worth a visit. None of the driving or navigation so far was challenging, but there was enough to see at each location that we never got bored.

Not every day you get to use a 100 year old outhouse!! The trip sheet at this point had us off towards White Top Mountain, and Hidden Springs, with the promise of several dry falls, some 18 to 24 inches in height. Well we never did find Hidden Springs, and the dry falls didn’t exist – so unless you want to be disappointed, the road to White Top Mountain is not recommended.

And so it was back to camp, but before we did that, there was one more side spur to Ubehebe Lead Mine, which is a couple of miles south of Teakettle Junction. Look – a photograph of a Land Rover! And some r&r back at camp.

In case you hadn’t figure it out, weather was
excellent, with overnight lows in the upper 40s, and daytime temps anywhere from 60 to 80 depending on elevation. And so Saturday draws to a close.

Sunday saw us up and about nice and early, time to break camp and head down LMR and off to Snowflake Talc Mine. It seems like the keepers of the sign didn’t like the old yellow painted version, so they’ve upgraded it a little.

This is the part of what remains of the old salt works in Saline Valley. And is one of the towers that was used to operate the tramway that hauled the salts over the mountains into Owens Valley.

Below shows the way the shelf road to Snowflake Talc Mine is carved into

the mountain side.

I still can’t quite figure the cost/benefit of all this work and effort for a few chunks of rock. I get that Lost Burro Mine was a small gold mine, but unless you’re picking up solid ingots, that an awful lot of rock to break for a small amount of gold. The same goes for the soapstone that came from the talc mine. For sure though, this shelf road was the driving highlight of the weekend. If I recall correctly, it runs for 3+ miles, with one sustained section of about ½ mile of rolling over debris fields where the gullies above the road have spilled their contents. This was my third trip up this road. First time was an abortive failure in my old DII with crippled traction control. Didn’t make it very far up the difficult section and reversing this was quite a challenge. Second time was again in the old truck, scrambling for grip with functional traction control and a CDL. Apparently momentum is the key, and a little road construction never hurt either.

If you’ve seen the video clips, then you’ll know that traction control + CDL + limited slip rear diff makes this a very enjoyable ride. It’s mostly a debris field, as opposed to a rock crawl, traction being the limiting factor.

That pretty much sums up the weekend – given the weather and the obvious lack of snow in the passes, we used North Pass out of Saline Valley – we’d both had enough of washboards by then, and wanted to get back to LA at a decent time. Late lunch/early dinner in Olancha, where we learned that the local birds have figured out the front of parked automobiles is a banquet buffet of bug guts!