By Denis & Sandi Inman
October and November are some of the best months to visit Death Valley National Park. After our trip through some of the trails in the park and on the West side of the Panamint range last week, we decided it would be a good time to check out several of the trails on the East side of the Panamints. With the Sun coming up an hour earlier due to the time change, Jeremy and I met in the Zabriskie Point parking lot at 6 AM to air down.
By Denis & Sandi Inman
Tuesday evening, the expedition leader neglected to get a consensus on our departure time so we didn’t leave Ridgecrest until almost 6:30. We don’t know where the winds blew the California Wildfire Smoke, but we enjoyed almost entirely clear blue skies for the last couple of days. For our first trail on Wednesday, we drove up Quarry Road out of Trona to see if we could possibly find the trail across Manley Pass. It was a nice ride with awesome panoramas from the top, but it became clear that the trail we were looking for was in “wilderness” so closed off to motorized vehicles.
By Denis & Sandi Inman
Now that the temperatures are more moderate, we decided it would be a good time to take a trip through Death Valley. After meeting at Ashford Mill a little before 7:00 on Tuesday morning and airing down, we got off the highway onto West Side Road, heading North until we reached Warm Springs Road where our group turned left. The Adventurers on this leg of the journey were me, Jeremy & Deanna, Vic & Janice, and Brian & Mike rode in the dustiest position.
Story & Photos by Denis & Sandi Inman, Pahrump Valley 4 Wheelers
There are several forks to take at Mormon Gulch and the first one we tried didn’t seem to go in our desired direction, so the resolute pair went back and chose another. Our second selection took us to Roger’s Pass. From there, we could have gone down the hill to Arrastre Spring that the larger PV4W group had just visited the previous day, but we opted to explore some new trails on our way back to Panamint Valley. Our preferred route ran in a westerly direction along the ridge above Butte Valley and we looked down at a large portion of Saturday’s club run.
Story & Photos by Denis & Sandi Inman
Considering that the length of the trip necessitated an early start, we had a pretty good turn out. Five Jeep Wranglers with six Pahrump Valley 4 Wheelers club members made the 4:50 AM driver’s meeting at the Horizon Market on Highway 372 and Linda Street. Our caravan reached Ashford Mill at about 6:00, began airing down and we were on West Side Road just after the official 6:16 sunrise. The group drove West on Warm Spring Canyon Road, stopping along the way at Grantham Mine and Warm Springs Mine to do some exploring.