Backcountry camping and hiking in Wild Horse Canyon of the Mojave National Preserve

This was our second back country camping spot in the Mojave National Preserve.

It was almost as isolated as was the first site--we sighted just a handful of vehicles in the week we were there.

The site was special in a couple of ways.  First, it was at the edge of a rather large burn area.  Ordinarily burn areas depress us, but this one was different because it was caused by nature.  In 2005 there were several lightening strikes here.  The desert burns and is reborn.  A natural cycle.

The other special part of this spot was that just to the left of the above photo the hills descend about 3000 feet, very rapidly, to the valley floor.  Here is a photo from that spot showing the train going through the middle of the valley and by Kelso Station (the restored train station that the Parks Service maintains).  We called it being on the edge of the world.

Here is a photo showing Vicky walking toward this spot:

In the mornings we would take our chairs to the edge of the precipice and drink our coffee.

And at night, from our camper, this is what we usually saw:

 

And what we saw when a storm approached from that direction.

Unfortunately, our hiking around this area was limited by the fact that I got a blister on my bunion.  Band aids and so on weren't working.  So what I did was create the Graybill-Hiking-with-Bunions shoe.  I haven't patented it yet.

 

Put a piece of duct tape over the opening, and it worked pretty well, surprisingly.  Because we were in an area that had a lot of small gravel, Vicky also used duct tape to tape my hiking pants to the back of the shoes.  That kept the gravel out.  Clever people aren't we?

 

We hiked in all directions, but the most fun direction was down toward the valley floor.  Because of said foot issue, we didn't get to do as much of this as we would have liked, but there is always next year!

Carruthers Canyon Hike: Mojave National Preserve: Giant Ledge Mine and settlements

This is a hike up old mine roads into the New York Mountains.  The destination points are the old Giant Ledge Mine, and an old mining settlement.

The old mine roads begin where back country camping sites exist.  Where we were camping was a few miles from this point, but we just walked it along the established roads. 

 

Along the way, one passes an Easter Island rock.  Below that distinctive rock is an old picnic spot.  We'd love to know the story of this picnic spot.  It looks to be Civilian Conservation Corps era, but not of the usual CCC quality.  Many years ago there was a settlement in this area, but why anyone would choose this spot to build a picnic area when they lived just a short distance away is curious.  Nobody at the Ranger station had any idea.  One of many mysteries that exist when people simply move out of an area and nobody moves in to replace them.

 

Then you pass by another distinctive rock--the foot rock.  Looks like a foot for a comic book character.

 

About half a mile later the steep mine road begins, the one that leads to the Giant Ledge Mine.

 We love these old mine roads.  Huge efforts to create them, and many are still in remarkably good shape, even years later.  Many could be repaired to the place where they could be used by vehicles with only minimal effort.  Working with hand tools.  Very impressive.

The mine was interesting in that it was the first one we had seen that still looked like the mines that we used to see in western movies of our youth.  Wood across the front, timbers holding up the rocks.  

 

Dan and Vicky's three rules of old mines:  1.  don't go in them, 2.  don't go in them, 3. don't go in them.  

Then we walked back down the mine road and caught a spur up to the camp where the miners lived.  Really more of a ghost town, in that there were probably a variety of structures there in addition to places to sleep and eat.  But who knows.

The most interesting artifact was an old car.  Why it was driven up there, and more interestingly, why it was just left there, are stories that we'll never hear.  But it made sense to somebody at the time.

Backcountry camping and hiking in the New York Mountains of the Mojave National Preserve

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Feb 23, 2014

  

Can you find us in the photo?  See anyone else around? 

We stayed at our first campsite in the Mojave National Preserve for seven nights.  In those seven nights not a single vehicle or person came anywhere near our campsite.  Just us, alone with the beauty of the New York Mountains.    

We stay in a variety of campgrounds.  It has not been unusual on this and our previous road trips for us to be the only campers there.  That is because we travel during the offseason, and in the west.  Once we got closer to the east coast, though, we frequently found ourselves in very busy places.  They have been nice for the most part, but we prefer the stillness of nature. 

During our week stay there, we hiked in every direction we could—up and around all of the hills, through the washes, up the roads to two canyons.  We also had two days where we just sat around and read and enjoyed the sound of the wind through the desert grasses.

We found evidence of old mines and old wells, and artifacts that we didn’t understand—such as two places high on hills where large X’s had been created with old plastic and old boards and where, in the center, was a 4-inch piece of metal nailed to the ground with a rusty nail that had the letter/number combination CP 102 and CP 103.  A mine claim?  At the Ranger Station, all we got were guesses.  

We also found some mines, and an old well.   

This mine was interesting because it still had the original ladder attached that men climbed down into the hole on.  Can you imagine doing this?  Not in my worst nightmare.

The Dawn of Man.  Cue Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Actually, we couldn’t figure out what this even was.  We sometimes found cairns in unusual places, with none others around anywhere in sight.  Someone built this one high on a hill, to mark something.  Took a lot of effort.

Such incredible beauty.  Just outside the door of our camper.  We walked one direction one day, another direction another day, and so on.