Ok fellers, what an amazing area. We had a blast, the only downfall is that because it was a holiday weekend, there were a lot of people. The area where we camped was on the Surprise Canyon road (on the valley floor). The road in is mellow enough that people had there 5th wheel trailers there, plus near Ballarat, there were Diesel Pusher type Class "A" motorhomes. So not a real tough area to get to. That is where the easy part stopped. The storm that moved through gave the area a real saturation, so there was a lot of water and evidence of heavy flows everywhere.
We got down there on Thursday afternoon and took a drive up Surprise Canyon to Chris Wicht's Camp (as far as you can drive). We checked everything out and turned around and headed back down to the valley floor and set up camp.
Friday morning we got up, got our hiking gear ready and made an assault on Surprise Canyon. We parked at CW camp and started hiking. Panamint City (ghost town) is seven miles up the canyon. There is no real "trail" up the canyon, that used to be driveable by a normal car. A couple of El Nino floods have taken care of that. There was a lot of crossing the creek that flows down the canyon. Waterproof boots and pants that you don't care about getting wet are highly recommended. There are a series of waterfalls through the narrow portions of the canyon that are truly impressive. We made it a little over halfway up the canyon to Panamint City, before we called it quits and turned around. The canyon was a battle the entire way up, there is almost no trail and a lot of bushwacking and back tracking to try and keep going up. With our being out of shape due to recent injuries/surgeries, it eft us unable to make it all the way. Next time.
We made it back to camp, recovered and had lunch. After a little while, we drove up to Claire's Camp up Pleasant Canyon. Again we were very surprised at how lush the canyon is and how much elevation we gained. We were camped at roughly 1200ft and Claire's Camp sits at about 5000ft. We walked around a little bit (wanted to save some for the next time) and headed back down the canyon. As we were heading back down, we heard a strange sound from the tire carrier, but didn't see anything wrong. We hit the valley floor just as it was getting dark, as we were getting ready to turn off onto Surprise Canyon Road, we hit a wash out, heard another strange noise and made the turn, I looked in my side view mirror and noticed that the tire carrier was open. I got out, looked and realized that my latch had broken. So I took a walk back along the road and located the broken piece. I strapped the carrier closed and eased back to camp.
Luckily I brought my Ready Welder, so Saturday morning, I got the latch welded back together. I wasn't entirely confident in the repair, so we decided to pack everything up and head back. We got back last night. Enough babbling, now for a few pictures, we only took a few, sorry.
Jack
We got down there on Thursday afternoon and took a drive up Surprise Canyon to Chris Wicht's Camp (as far as you can drive). We checked everything out and turned around and headed back down to the valley floor and set up camp.
Friday morning we got up, got our hiking gear ready and made an assault on Surprise Canyon. We parked at CW camp and started hiking. Panamint City (ghost town) is seven miles up the canyon. There is no real "trail" up the canyon, that used to be driveable by a normal car. A couple of El Nino floods have taken care of that. There was a lot of crossing the creek that flows down the canyon. Waterproof boots and pants that you don't care about getting wet are highly recommended. There are a series of waterfalls through the narrow portions of the canyon that are truly impressive. We made it a little over halfway up the canyon to Panamint City, before we called it quits and turned around. The canyon was a battle the entire way up, there is almost no trail and a lot of bushwacking and back tracking to try and keep going up. With our being out of shape due to recent injuries/surgeries, it eft us unable to make it all the way. Next time.
We made it back to camp, recovered and had lunch. After a little while, we drove up to Claire's Camp up Pleasant Canyon. Again we were very surprised at how lush the canyon is and how much elevation we gained. We were camped at roughly 1200ft and Claire's Camp sits at about 5000ft. We walked around a little bit (wanted to save some for the next time) and headed back down the canyon. As we were heading back down, we heard a strange sound from the tire carrier, but didn't see anything wrong. We hit the valley floor just as it was getting dark, as we were getting ready to turn off onto Surprise Canyon Road, we hit a wash out, heard another strange noise and made the turn, I looked in my side view mirror and noticed that the tire carrier was open. I got out, looked and realized that my latch had broken. So I took a walk back along the road and located the broken piece. I strapped the carrier closed and eased back to camp.
Luckily I brought my Ready Welder, so Saturday morning, I got the latch welded back together. I wasn't entirely confident in the repair, so we decided to pack everything up and head back. We got back last night. Enough babbling, now for a few pictures, we only took a few, sorry.
Jack
