Death Valley - through the back door

Story and photos by Len Wilcox

Relatively easy ways exist to visit Death Valley. Travelers can come by bus or car to some very fancy hotels on the valley floor, or camp in the cool (well, somewhat cooler would be more accurate) Panamint Mountains.  The roads in and out of the valley are paved and maintained; not freeways, of course, but easy enough and safe enough for any passenger car.  However, my favorite way in or out of the Valley is through the back door.  I've traveled through two of the back doors: Goler Wash, over the Panamints; and Lippincott Mine road, up around Ubehebe to the Saline Valley.  These are serious 4-wheel-drive trails.  Either route is dangerous enough to be your last trip anywhere.  But they are both great trips that can show a visitor the real power of Death Valley and the surrounding Mojave.

The Panamints

The Panamint Mountains are a startlingly steep backdrop to Death Valley. They rise from the floor of the valley (about 280 feet below sea level at Badwater) to more than 11,000 feet - in just a few miles. Very few passages across these mountains exist, and none of them are easy. Goler Wash Trail - also known as Coyote Basin Road - is the southern route across these rugged and steep mountains. It is a long trail, requiring about 5 to 6 hours to travel, and has several moderate trail obstacles and a few difficult ones. The condition of the road, and the degree of difficulty, changes with the weather and the amount of maintenance recently done.    
Most people get to the Goler Wash trail by first going to Ballarat, then proceeding south on the oiled road past the Briggs mine (where the oiled road turns to dirt) then southward 15 miles to the alluvial fan of Goler Wash. We came the hard way, from Trona over the mountains to the east, then down Fish Canyon to drop into the Panamint Valley the joining the road near the alluvial fan.
Thus, we entered Goler Wash around noon on a cool February day. There were high clouds, from a storm that was coming the next day. Weather reports said we'd be dry today but tomorrow was chancy, even in Death Valley. If there'd been any chance of rain we would not have entered the canyon - it would be a deadly place to be when the water runs.    

Our Goler Wash trail trip was a group expedition.  It started in Ridgecrest with a driver's meeting at dawn in a motel parking lot: hot coffee, sharp, dry, cold air, beautiful morning sky. This was a large group, some 40 people, all in a happy, adventurous mood - no grumps allowed, just good company.  We had 17 vehicles, varying from my completely stock (except for trail tires) Jeep Grand Cherokee to some tough, built-up trucks that looked like they could climb a cliff.  This was my first time for traveling in an organized group.  My son Steve was along.

Going with a group has its benefits.  It's safer, and breakdowns are less of a problem. These people love their trucks; 4-wheeling is their hobby, their avocation.  People who don't go wheeling probably don't understand; they see the lifted trucks, the knobby trail tires, the dents, the dust and the brush marks, and wonder why we are tearing up these vehicles we spent so much money buying and fixing up. 

Well, there's a famous saying: 'it's a Jeep thing, you wouldn't understand'. Some wheelers are as intense about 4-wheeling as golfers are about chasing a little white ball.  It's all about getting out and exploring wild country, rising to the challenge of tough trails and rock obstacles, teaching the kids about nature and its beauties (when they listen), and sharing the wildlands for a few hours or days.  It's about freedom.  It's not about destruction; most of the serious 4-wheelers I've met are passionate environmentalists and take great pains to make sure their presence does not harm the land or its inhabitants.

I'd never gone on a trail ride like this before.  Organization is anathema to an anarchic mind like mine.  But it was a relief to travel with people who didn't think I was crazy for taking this bright, shiny, fully-loaded automobile out on the rocks; they understood.  I didn't have to explain a thing.  For all the chrome and comfort, it's still a Jeep.  I understood them, too, when, down the trail, they would stop to pick up some one else's trash; I did the same thing.  One of the unwritten rules is to leave the land better than you found it.

Our trail master, Terry Johnson, is a comptroller for a company in the Bay area, and drives a tricked-out Toyota truck.  He's laid out our route and made plans for stops and side-excursions; all we have to do is follow along. 

This route pierces the heart of the Panamint Range, running between Wingate Road south of the ghost town of Ballarat, and West Side Road in Death Valley. Coming from the Panamints, the trail rises from the floor of the valley to 4,328-foot-high Mengel Pass, via the magnificent Goler Canyon, then crosses Butte Valley and follows Warm Springs Canyon into Death Valley. The worst obstacles are at the start of the climb up Goler wash as you're in the bottom of a very narrow canyon - and you have to go up and over a series of waterfalls.

Climbing these waterfalls was an experience. Every couple of years, the Inyo County Road Department adds rock and gravel to the worst of the climbs, in an attempt to keep the route open.  When they do this the route is not all that difficult, even in a stock vehicle with a good driver. But every year or so the rains and floodwaters remove the gravel and a steep, rocky incline remains.

My first look at the waterfall was… dismaying. The only things that kept me from turning around were pride (my son was along; and of course I couldn't back out with him watching) and the sure knowledge that Terry had a stout truck with a winch, and he was ahead of me. Watching Terry ease up the waterfall with his '89 Toyota XCab SR5, V6, with a crawl ratio of 187:1, lockers, and so on, didn't help my confidence. I thought I had an open differential, and I knew that the loose rock on the right was going to slip and the traction was on the left side, where I didn't have any power. I was going to pay for my comfortable ride in a stock Sport Utility, by getting winched up the waterfall.  This was going to hurt my pride.

They call these things obstacles.

These avid 4-wheelers love rocks, and when we come to a bunch of them like this, we line up the vehicles then everybody gets out to look things over, and watch, shout encouragement, and take pictures and videos of each driver's efforts.  Each passage is a victory, and when the winch is needed, the driver is red-faced and abashed. This obstacle looked like an SUV-killer, with dent-makers and car-stoppers all over the place, and exercising the winch was a certainty.

Well, I was wrong; my differential has limited slip, and even Jeep's SUV's are impressive machines. I got the right line and rowdied my way up the canyon, and beat the obstacle on my first try - without damaging any sheet metal, much to everyone's surprise.  We followed the canyon up into the Panamints.

This is virtually a slot canyon, nearly as wide at the top as it is at the bottom.  I'm very paranoid in these types of places; I see floodwaters coming, rocks falling from the cliff above, all sorts of catastrophes that would be fatal - none of which happen, but could, and they worry me.  We climbed through the narrow rock walls and they eventually widened into the canyon. Suddenly, a group of 5 or 6 Bighorn Sheep scampered up the mountainside as we broke through and worked our way forward.    

We were surrounded by beautiful desert mountains on a moderately easy trail, fit for any Sport Utility Vehicle with low range. Soon we came to the Keystone mine headquarters, whose owner had left a sign inviting us to use his cabin - just leave it as we found it. Further along, the mountains widen and we pass a marker informing us we were entering Death Valley National Park.    

Just beyond the marker, a road cuts off to the south from our trail. It's the road to the infamous Death Valley home of Charlie Manson: Barker Ranch.     

Barker Ranch

Barker Ranch is an old place, hidden far from pavement, a place with water and trees, an oasis that time has passed by.  The road to the ranch is nearly overgrown by brush and trees that block the sun.  The ranch house is a cabin that is open for visitors to stay, with a log book to sign and a small collection of paperback books to help while away the time.  The Park Service maintains the cabin and it was tidy and clean.     

Charlie Manson, the leader of a cult that had some members convicted of several bizarre crimes in the 1960's, currently resides in a state prison; he'll probably be there for the rest of his life.  His 'helter-skelter' philosophy, an updated version of Armageddon, coupled with his magnetic personality and a mix of sex, drugs and music, brought him incredibly loyal followers.  They still exist, and they still come here, to Manson's last home that doesn't have bars and guards.  Photocopies of hand-written missives, written by the now-old women who stayed here with the cult, are on the tables inside the cabin.  They are a strange and somber collection, all defending Manson.

We descended on the Barker Ranch en masse.  Like riders on a tour bus making a pit stop, we fell out of our vehicles, tired and needing a stretch from the long, difficult drive, and approached the mysterious cabin under the trees.   

"This place gives me the chills," Terry Johnson told me.  I knew how he felt: there was an aura of some unholy and evil presence, a threat to the peace and harmony of the surrounding desert world.

"The pool was over there," another wheeler added.  "They'd swim naked and do drugs.  I bet they had some wild parties."  Later, he told me, "I got here late one evening, a year or two back, and decided to stay the night.  I couldn't.  This place is too spooky.  I went on down the road and camped."

Back on the trail, the route to Mengel Pass degrades and we're back among rocks and loose sand. It's passable but teases us with hopes of some serious 4-wheeling; I stay in low range for this section. Ever since entering the canyon, we've seen signs of wild horses and burros; they abound here, but we don't see them in the flesh. About 3 and a half miles past the Barker Ranch turnoff we're at the summit.

It's a beautiful view all around, with Butte Valley ahead and a marker honoring the memory of Death Valley miner Carl Mengel, who spent much of his life working a mine nearby. He came to Death Valley in 1912, and died here in 1944. At his request his ashes are buried at the summit.

It's dusk, and a long trail is still ahead before we intersect a paved road in the heart of Death Valley south of Badwater.  And, once we're there, we're still nowhere near a hotel; another hour or so of highway driving would bring us to Beatty and the Burro Inn.  It's a long, long way to nowhere. This is empty, open country.

Note: This article was excerpted from the book Desert Dancing by Len Wilcox -- Click for a special offer for an autographed copy.