On Friday November 11th 2001 we hit the road after work and travel north to Ridgecrest where we meet up with a group of friends to explore one of the not so visited parts of Death Valley. The next morning the group is ready to tackle the unknown territory and we visit the Trona Pinnacles on our way to the ghost town of Ballarat. We take some pictures of the remains and soon we are on our trail towards Poster Peak. The 4 rigs work their way up the trail which seems to serve as a water drainage and the wet, loose rocks make for a slippery ground. For some of the trucks with open differentials this offers a little challenge. We follow the path uphill between spectacular rock walls venturing further and further into the narrow gorge. This valley will eventually take us into the Death Valley National Park but not into the main valley. The plan is to to return back through one of the canyons which runs parallel to this one. On the way we stop to check out some mines scattered around another small ghost town. Where the canyon starts to open up a little more we find one of the few cabins which are maintained by volunteers, but most of our group wants to keep going. Finally, when the darkness settles in we have a hard time to find a place to camp out and we decide to turn around to seek shelter in that cabin. It is November and the temperatures during the day are very comfortable but as soon as the sun goes down the degrees drop and it doesn't take long until the chilling air finds it's way trough our cloths. The altitude of over 6000 feet doesn't really help this matter. The cabin is well equipped and we fire up the 'oil drum' oven to get the interior heated. We spend a cosy evening chatting and enjoying the various foods - everybody pitched in. Most of go to bed at around midnight, just to get up again at 1:00am because there is a meteor shower forcasted for this night. We watch the amazing spectacle of the clear sky until the freezing cold makes us crawl back into our sleeping bags.
The next morning we get a slow start after breakfast and loop via Poster Peak back into the Panamint Valley. We explore two more of thosesleeping cabins and we are very impressed by the last one we see: it is very luxurious. Bunk beds, running water, stove, radio, outside barbeque. We stop for lunch and enjoy the view down through the canyon into Panamint Valley. On our way down we get to an 'infamous' narrow bridge with a 500 foot drop on one side without a guardrail but it turns out that the width is plenty. Since the day is slowly coming to an end we skip the trip through Goler Canyon and we return to Ridgecrest where our path split.
It was a fun weekend with friends. Magdalena and I have visited Death Valley many times before but we have never visited this area along the edge of the National Park. For us this is definitely a place which offers endless exploring opportunities. You do want to travel in winter though...