Hiking Death Valley Part 2 — Room Canyon and…Water Crossings?
February 15, 2019.
The night passed much more peacefully than the one before and we slept extremely well on our new Exped Megamat Duo 10 — a great fit in the @cascadia tents Mt. Shasta, and significantly more comfortable than the foam mattress. Hoping for a dramatic sunrise, I was up early to explore camp.
In the end, given our location in the pass — there wasn’t much color in the sky, the weather seemed to be holding and the temps were warmer than the day before, and I was happy to explore the hilly area around camp to see what secrets it held.
Rhodes Spring was founded in spring 1886 by A.G. Rhodes and his partner where they mined and 1200lbs of silver ore — netting them $800. On their return trip in the fall, they apparently perished somewhere in the desert and the claim was abandoned for the next 20 years. In 1905, prospectors in the area discovered Rhodes’ location markers as well as two additional tons of silver ore awaiting shipment. Silver continued to be mined in the area for a couple more years before shutting down once again in 1907, just before three prospectors discovered a gold deposit worth $25,000 per ton in 1908. Unfortunately, this turned out to be an isolated pocket and no further gold was found despite extensive tunneling. It wasn’t until 1935 that Lou McGirk filed a location notice and developed a small cone-crusher mill mining operation a quarter mile up the canyon, continuing operations on a small scale until the mid 1950’s. The cabin, as it exists today, remains from this era of the mine’s history.short history we found in the cabin
The area itself had a few different structures on it — the cabin of course, which we’d explored the evening before — but also a secondary building a little further up a wash, and a large concrete water storage tank on a hill to the north. Each offered splendid views back towards camp and down into the valley to the west.
As I explored some more, I was excited to come across the conical mill that had been mentioned in the cabin’s history, and I enjoyed the few wildflowers also blooming in the same wash.
As I headed back towards camp, the sun was trying it’s hardest to break through the clouds — unsuccessfully at our location, but with great zeal a little further west. What a morning!
And then, as I walked down a wash adjascent to the conical mill, I discovered a cave. Could this have been the location of the gold deposit that was found in the early 1900's? I’ll perhaps never know, but I was still elated to be able to explore this cool little relic before heading back to camp past a rusted-out old car that had clearly seen better days!
Back in camp, everyone else was starting to stir and it was time to make breakfast and get our tents put away. Of course, I couldn’t resist a few photos of the truck — especially given the relatively small amount of driving we’d be doing this trip, and the peeking out of the new ADS suspension that I’d recently installed.
As @mrs.turbodb made breakfast — cereal with fresh strawberries and dark chocolate granola bars, I looked around the cabin a bit more. The evening before we’d wondered over the “garden” out front, and as I once again tried to figure it out, it finally dawned on me what this was — it was a miniature golf course! Each can was a hole, some a bit more interesting to putt into than others.
With breakfast wrapped up and our equipment stowed, there was just one thing left to do before pulling out — sign the guest book. It was only after returning from the trip that I realized I should have checked the book for an entry or two from previous visits by my dad and uncle, since I knew that this southern end of Death Valley was one of their favorites!
We had only a couple miles of dirt to get back to Highway 178, but I took full advantage to stretch out the legs of the new suspension — this my first opportunity to do so since I’d completely the installation a few weeks earlier. Needless to say, I was impressed — it was significantly better (especially in the rear) than what I’d had installed previously, and of course it was nice to not have to worry about bottoming out the rear as we’d done so many times on the Mojave Road in December.
As we headed west, we reveled in the morning sun — we’d gotten a peak of it the evening before, but seeing Death Valley bathed in light, and snow on the top of Telescope Peak was more than we could resist. Even with a full day of hiking and exploration in front of us, we took the time to enjoy the moment.
Before long, we reached our first trailhead — like the previous day, a single unmarked waypoint designating a spot we were to pull over on the side of the road.
And, like the day before, we set out once again up a long alluvial fan towards our destination — Room Canyon — this time under sunny blue skies. Excited to see what this trail had in store, we were soon at the mouth of the canyon, it’s walls rising up and beckoning us inside.
In preparation for all of our hikes, I’d mapped coordinates on Google Earth, and I had them downloaded onto my phone so I could be sure that we were headed the right direction — trail markers and footprints non-existent on these over-desert adventures. Unfortunately, on our Room Canyon hike, I completely forgot to take out my phone, and that meant that we entirely missed the pinnacles (some of the tallest in Death Valley) and side narrows loop portion of the hike — a bummer, but also a great reason to return!
Instead, we carried on towards the room, making our way through up the main narrows — over, under, and around large boulders that have fallen from the walls over the years.
Eventually I came to what I thought was the room — though at this point we’d been separated from each other — I’d slowed down to take photos — and I was exploring on my own for the time being. A grand opening in the canyon, the glow of the walls from the morning sun was gorgeous and as I made my way through, I came to a dry fall that would clearly need scaling. Aw shucks, right?
Quick work made of the falls, I finally took out my phone to find that it was only here that I was actually entering the official room of the canyon, another sight to behold — though, in my humble opinion, not as nice as the previous grand opening…
At the end, I made quick work of another (taller) dry fall and explored a bit further up the canyon before turning back — convinced that the rest of the group wouldn’t have made it this far so quickly and so that I must have unknowingly passed them at some point.
So I made my way back to the room, whistled to let the group know where I was, and then waited for them to make their way up canyon. Turns out they weren’t far behind at this point, and my whistle alerted @mrs.turbodb that they were on the right track, and within a few minutes they joined me in the room.
It was time for some goofy photos.
We hung out for a while — enjoying the quiet solitude and good company in Room Canyon — before finally deciding that we should make our way back to the trucks. This was only our first — of at least three — hikes for the day! So it was that we tore ourselves away, first down the smaller of the two dry washes (which was still pretty big), and then out through the towering walls of the canyon. As often the case, I found myself rephotographing many of the same places, not wanting to miss anything!
Before long, the long alluvial fan was all that stood between us and the trucks, Telescope Peak and the Panamint Range towering above the valley floor in their snow-covered glory.
Room Canyon hadn’t disappointed — it wasn’t perhaps as spectacular as Kaleidoscope the day before, but it was pleasant and frankly a jewel to find so centrally within the valley and so close to the road. Back at the trucks, we decided to head to our next trailhead — one for Sidewinder Canyon — and then eat lunch before setting out. It was still quite early — well before noon — so everyone was totally fine with that plan.
To a person, I think we all had sandwiches and chips for lunch — though our sandwich and chip selections were varied in both preparation (Ben @m3bassman and Mikey @pizzaviolence had pre-assembled at home) and content (@mrs.turbodb and I had PB&J this day) and then we set off on what was the only “mainstream” canyon hike of the trip.
In fact, we hadn’t planned to hike Sidewinder Canyon at all, but earlier in the day I had realized that I’d forgotten to download the coordinates for Room Canyon and so it was suggested that Sidewinder might be a good substitute — Diggonet’s Hiking Death Valley suggesting that it was an experience like no other — six side slot canyons to explore along the length of the main wash.
Eager for such an experience, we headed up.
To see what we discovered, continue reading Hiking Death Valley on AdventureTaco.com.
Originally published at adventuretaco.com.
