Our trip to the Golden Valley Wilderness
Golden Valley Wilderness, photo by Andrew Perry
Our trip to the Golden Valley Wilderness – On Father’s Day weekend 2010, I spent some quality time with my dad Joe Perry exploring the Golden Valley Wilderness. It wasn’t the most successful of trips, it was marred with problems, and we didn’t find anything too extravagant – but it was still awesome in its own right as an adventure.
We hit the road at about 8 p.m., and got into the area around 11 p.m., entering via a road behind Red Mountain (near Randsburg/Johannesburg). We took this road out to a dry lake behind the Lava Mountains called Cuddeback Lake. We were trying to find a faint road that would take us north around Almond Mountain into the Golden Valley. We got lost numerous times in that northern section of Cuddeback Lake.
Finally, at around 3 a.m. we think we find the road. A very faint road. After following it for a while, it disappears. At this time, we were convinced we were still on the right direction, so we continued forward, dodging rocks and bushes and thinking we were following the remnants of a road. Suddenly, a clear road appears and we take it. We were excited because there were a lot of landmarks that kept popping up – ravines, certain turns, etc.
But it was all an illusion.
At 4 a.m. we realize that we made a huge circle in the desert, and we were in fact back where we started at the northern end of Cuddeback Lake. We decided right there and then to get some sleep.
The next morning, I get up first and hike up a nearby hill to get a better view at the valley below. Through the bushes, I detect a very faint jeep trail meandering through the bushes.
Later, when Joe wakes up, we take the trail again and find the faint little jeep trail that would eventually take us to the main road into the Golden Valley.
I drive a Toyota Highlander, which is a good vehicle, but it wasn’t equipped for this road. Or rather, it would be a lot safer to take two vehicles. The road looked as if it hadn’t been traveled upon for many months. A few times I got out of the vehicle to move large rocks, and a few smaller, jutting rocks just to calm myself down. We went about 4 miles down the road and explored a small hill of lava rocks, taking in the view.
The valley is beautiful, but we didn’t find anything. We hypothesize, however, that our search was a bad sample, and that there are much more things to find throughout this valley. We also think that the road may in fact have been parallel to (or actually be) an old Indian trail (actually, the equivalent of an Indian highway) that connected Cuddeback Lake to water sources near the Panamint Range. That’s pure conjecture at this point, though.
