A Time of Solace and Solitude in the Panamint Valley

In May of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, there were no vaccines in the immediate offing. Tired of sitting at home, I headed out with my RV to Panamint Springs Resort, which is a private enclave surrounded by Death Valley National Park. As seen in the adjacent photo, Death Valley National Park was closed to all visitors. Highway 190 was still open through the park, but even stopping along the way to take a picture could have netted you a $1,000 fine. No one understood how, when or where the virus could be transmitted, but the National Park Service was not taking any chances, one way or the other.

Since the resort is private and needed to stay in business, they were open for camping and cabin accommodations. Taking advantage of that and being completely self-contained, I booked a full hookup RV spot for several days. When I arrived, the clerk in the general store wore no mask. He indicated that they would be barbecuing ribs at the restaurant that night and that I should attend. "Not on your life," I thought to myself. Although I was largely confined to the resort property, I went on to enjoy the solitude and splendor of spending time in the Panamint Valley.

Three and one half years later, I was in the process of finishing up another trip to Death Valley and Panamint Springs. On December 10, 2023, there were high winds predicted for the southern Mojave Desert. With the stress of having recently spent time entertaining my friends in the desert, I was too tired to break camp and head home in a windstorm. Instead, I opted for a quiet day in camp at the Panamint Springs Resort. As I have often said, there usually are no crowds in Death Valley National Park between Thanksgiving and New Years. This year was no exception.

When I travel with my fifth wheel, I always bring provisions for several extra days. If I experience a breakdown or any other form of delay, my fridge and freezer always have enough food to get me by. In this case, my full RV hookup made it easy to extend my stay for one more day. Access to water, propane, electricity and sewer allowed for luxury camping in one of the most remote and previously inhospitable places in all of the United States.

On December 11, 2023 I broke camp and prepared to leave for home. On my return trip I was able to avoid the delays associated with road repair between Panamint Springs and Lone Pine. As it turned out, the Panamint Valley Road to Trona and Mojave beyond was fully open and free of construction delays. If I had known that on my way into Panamint Springs at the beginning of my journey, I could have saved hours of detours and delays. As it stood, my return trip home to Simi Valley took less than five hours. That reminded me of why I like to visit Panamint Springs every fall, winter, and spring. In less than a day, I can transport myself from the city to life in the nearby wilderness.

Panamint Valley may not be as famous as its sister, Death Valley, but it has trails to explore, sand dunes to climb, off-road tracks for four-wheeling and a sense of solitude that you will not find at Furnace Creek, Stovepipe Wells or Badwater. In the off-season, it is my favorite place for kicking back and enjoying life, just as it might have been almost one hundred years ago. For those who require instant and constant connectivity, either bring your Starlink satellite system or just enjoy being beyond the fringe of connection to the smartphone world. I do suggest bringing a Zoleo satellite communicator, but that device is for text messaging only.

Although I do everything I can to promote visiting the Panamint Valley during its extreme off season, I do not expect there to be big crowds in early December 2024, when once again, I shall seek solace in the Panamint Valley. If enough people read this blog and decide to visit, perhaps I will see one or two of you there at that time of year.

This is Part Seven of a Seven Part article. To return to Part One, click HERE.

Email James McGillis

Four-Wheeling Thompson Canyon and Stony Canyon in Death Valley National Park

On December 8, 2023 at 10 AM, Don and Natala Goodman were at my door, ready for a four-wheeling adventure. We headed out on the Panamint Valley Road to Minietta Road. There, we took a left turn on an unsigned portion of the road that leads to the very heart of the Panamint Valley. Less than a mile from the highway, we paused and exited my vehicle. When there are no military planes flying over, the loudest sounds in Panamint Valley are the braying of a lonesome burro or the rustling of the breeze. Today, it was the silence and desolation that impressed the three of us.

Returning to the Panamint Valley Road, we crossed the highway and took Minietta Road west, up and over some hills. The road is rough and rocky, so the going was slow. Once we crested the hills, we could see Thompson Canyon ahead of us. The portion we could see featured a wide and deep alluvial fan. On a previous visit, I had traveled up Thompson Canyon Road towards Minnietta Mine, which is an abandoned miner’s cabin on a nearby hill. The mine’s name has two N’s, but the road name has only one N.

At the bottom of the first hill, we transitioned on to Nadeau Road, which was as rough as Minietta Road. The name Nadeau is rich within the history of Death Valley and the entire Mojave Desert. It was French-Canadian pioneer Remi Nadeau who first used mule teams to haul supplies, ore, and bullion to and from the Cerro Gordo silver mine and other mines nearby. Nadeau Road, or Nadeau Trail as it is also known, still exists as a 28-mile-long part of America’s national system of trails. Nadeau’s concept was to use twenty or more mules to haul heavily laden wooden wagons over inhospitable trails throughout the desert and adjacent mountain passes. His pioneering work continues its lineage in the laundry product known as Twenty Mule Team Borax and the historic radio and television show Death Valley Days.

As we entered Nadeau Road, Don Goodman, the airplane pilot pointed out a faded orange windsock by the side of the road. He had identified a wide spot in that road that served as a remote landing strip. With no airplanes in sight, we rocked on down the road. I had hoped to find a wreck of a car that I had found on a previous trip, but navigating in the desert can be tricky. One trail can look just like another. The wreck, which we did not find on this trip consisted of a sports car that had blown a tire in extravagant fashion, flipped over many times and came to rest as a flattened heap of rusty metal and rubber. Could it possibly been going so fast as to wreck right on that spot? With its total devastation, I assumed that it had crashed on Panamint Valley Road and been hauled here, to its final resting place.

Traveling on at a very slow pace, the trail consisted of stones, varying in size form pebbles to boulders. To the north, we observed rock abutments that once held a mining road leading out of our lost valley. With their size and fitment, they looked a bit like the stone abutments of Machu Pichu in Peru. The scene appeared long abandoned and the road which they once supported had washed away in several places. The fitment of the shaped boulders still intrigues me.

With the Nadeau Trail being so much easier to traverse, why would anyone take the time and effort to support a dirt road up a steep incline out of Stony Canyon, which was the place where we now found ourselves? After reviewing the area on Google Maps, the rock revetments are even more mysterious. The road that they once supported paralleled the track we were on, but reconnected to Minietta Road closer to our point of entry. Someone had spent a huge amount of time and effort to create a road that was much more difficult to drive and maintain.

On we traveled into what one might call the valley of the shadow of death. The going was so rough that Don had to exit the cab of my truck and move sharp rocks from our path. Often leaning out the passenger side window, he would call out “Left” or “right” to miss the most severe obstacles. As we progressed, the rocky terrain became almost devoid of any soil. Boulders and rocks rounded by their journey from the upper canyons to the lower valley were everywhere. After traversing two small washouts, we came across a washout that was too deep to transit.

Stopping for a picnic lunch, we marveled at the mountain and desert scenery. Don walked up the road beyond the washout and discovered an earthwork with wooden cribbing. Apparently, it was designed to load ore into wagons for the transit away from the local mines. Looking back on the scene now, I wonder if it was one of Remi Nadeau’s original wagon-loading points. Later, after consulting a map, we discovered that we had stopped only five hard miles in from where we had departed the pavement of Panamint Valley Road.

A few people with shovels and the desire to move some rocks and sand could reopen that stretch of Nadeau Road, but we were not prepared to take on that task. Looking at maps from the comfort of my home office, I now realize that Nadeau Road connects back to Panamint Valley Road a few miles beyond the washout. It also connects further on to Highway 190 Near Panamint Springs. In fact, the portion of Highway 190 between Panamint Springs and Panamint Valley Road is also identified as Nadeau Trail. My hope is that some volunteers from local off-road clubs will caravan to that washout and reopen one of the truly historic roads within Death Valley National Park.

After returning to our base camp at Panamint Springs Resort, we rested and met again early in the evening. Don and Natala had offered to take me to dinner at the Panamint Springs Restaurant & Bar. In all my recent visits to Panamint Springs, either the pandemic or lack of someone to share a meal with had kept me away from the restaurant. How good could a roadhouse originally built in the 1930’s be as a place to dine? I was soon to find out.

As we settled into our table by a roaring fire, I perused the menu. Natala ordered the Cardiac Arrest Burger and Don had another selection. I ordered the half-rack of spare ribs, fries, and coleslaw, for $31.50. While waiting for our dinner, I explored the bar area. There, I discovered a massive redwood bar designed by renowned American architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen (1929-2021).

It consisted of a single slab of California Coastal Redwood, which was over four inches thick and at least twenty feet long. The root structure from the same tree trunk became the support for the iconic bar. Jacobsen had owned property in the nearby mining town of Darwin, California. The bar arrived sometime in the early 1990’s, but the story became clouded by the passage of time and changes in the resort’s ownership. It is a work of art unlike anything else I have ever seen. If you pass through Panamint Springs, you must visit the restaurant and sit at that amazing bar.

Never judge a book by its cover and never misjudge a bar & grill in the middle of nowhere. The fries were sublime, and the ribs were a culinary perfection. According to the menu, the ribs pair well with a Pedroncelli Sonoma Petite Sarah. Next time I am at Panamint Springs, I will certainly order that pairing.

This is Part Five of a Seven Part article. To read Part Six, Click HERE. To return to Part One, click HERE.

Email James McGillis

Rendezvous With Friends in Panamint Springs - December 2023

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Dry Camping in Death Valley - December 2023

At 9 AM on December 6, 2023, I trundled down to the Furnace Creek Campground entrance kiosk and asked if anyone with a full hookup RV site had vacated their spot. As of that time, I had no luck there. After a cold night without heat in my coach, there was no way I was going to spend second night living like a cave dweller in a dry camping site. In December there are too few hours of sunlight to fully charge my house batteries. With laggardly solar battery power it seemed that my only option was to "pick up stakes" and head back one day early for Panamint Springs.

If given the option to have power or sewer, I will select electrical power every time. I can always cut back on sewer usage, but the lack of electrical power at the Furnace Creek dry campsites was for me is a bridge too far. Yes, there are RVs that have 1,000 watts or more of solar panels and 200+ amp-hours of lithium-ion batteries onboard, but mine is not yet one of them. As of that mid morning moment, my rig had about ten amp-hours of battery power remaining. That was not nearly enough to see me through another cold desert night.

Rather than booking out for Panamint Springs, I decided to take a drive and see the sights. Before leaving the campground, I swung my truck back around and asked the ranger at the kiosk if anyone had vacated a full hookup since 9 AM. Yes, indeed, someone had abandoned their prime RV site and left it vacant for me. After paying for my new site, I headed off to Zabriskie Point to climb the hill and see the sights in Death Valley. Best seen at sunset, Zabriskie Point is spectacular at any time of day. The slowly melting mud stone hills look like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. They are colorful and surrealistic to say the least.

While returning from Zabriskie Point to Furnace Creek, I hung a left on Badwater Road. It is seventeen miles to Badwater, itself. At 282 feet below mean sea level, that place is touted as the lowest elevation location in North America. Normally, it is a white salt flat that stretches across the breadth of lower Death Valley. Once in 2005 and now again since August 2023, it has returned to its ancient glory as Lake Manly. With no discernible wind, the shallow lake water reflects anything on its horizon. Having visited Badwater once before, I had no desire to cover my shoes and truck cab with untold amounts of sticky salt material. Instead, I drove another quarter mile along the highway, which stretches toward Shoshone and intersects with Interstate I-15 at Baker, California. When I stopped along the highway at the lower foot of shallow Lake Manly, the view north across the full length of the lake was sublime.

The return trip to Furnace Creek has an altitude gain of exactly 282 feet, meaning that at the junction with Highway 190, you are once again at mean sea level. On that return trip, one can make several side trips. The first opportunity is at Devil's Golf Course, which is not to be confused with the Devil's Cornfield, at the opposite end of Death Valley. Early travelers throughout the Western United States were obsessed with naming any large, solitary rock formation "Church Rock" and almost anything hot and dry "Devils Whatever."

Other than the Devil's Golf Course there are two notable side trips available on the Badwater Road. The first is a cutoff to the right called Natural Bridge Road, as the name implies, the road leads to a hiking trail that in turn leads to Natural Bridge. Some might call it a stone arch, but they would be wrong, Any stone arch that spans even a dry watercourse is called a natural bridge. Good luck climbing up and crossing Natural Bridge. It spans a canyon from wall to wall and is both thirty-five feet thick and thirty-five feet from the canyon floor to the underside of the arch. Although the round trip hike is only one mile, there is no water available and very little shade during the middle of the day. The National Park Service recommends not making the hike after 10 AM during the hot season.

The second side trip is Artist's Drive, which is a loop road through a series of hills and gullies that may spring to life with color, but only on the right day at the right time. Otherwise the hills have a dull green or dull red hue to them. Good luck to you if you arrive on a day when the Artist's Palette comes to life. The road itself is one way only, so once you start, you are committed to looping up, over, around, and through a sinuous ribbon of asphalt to the very end, which is once again at Badwater Road. If you have never taken Artist's Drive, I recommend taking it, just so you can check it off your bucket list. If you take the trip again on your next visit to Death Valley, count yourself as an optimist. I say that because the odds are about one thousand to one that you will see the same dull green and red hills you saw on your last visit.

After returning to my campsite, I closed the slide-outs on my RV, hooked it up to my truck and traveled two hundred yards to my “new” full hookup site. No longer feeling like a 49er lost in time, I prepared for one more night at Furnace Creek Campground in Death Valley. Only this time, I had electric lights and two space heaters to warm my bones. Unlike the lost emigrants of 1849 Death Valley, there was to be no brush lean-to or cave dwelling for me. It was almost 174 years to the day that the original lost families made their way out of Death Valley to civilization, better known as Los Angeles.

The following day, I would travel back over Towne Pass to Panamint Springs Resort, where I would spend two more nights. After that, I would take my own quick trip back to civilization, better known as Los Angeles.

This is Part Three of a Seven Part article. To read Part Four, Click HERE. To return to Part One, click HERE.

Email James McGillis