Cindy's Birthday Run 2014 - Part 1 : Isham Canyon

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wayoflife

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Last weekend was Cindy's birthday and to celebrate it, we decided to go on a 3 day, 400+ mile run starting from Trona, CA and ending near Montgomery Pass, NV. Along for the ride were our good friends Doug, Moochie, Don, Ray, Tony and Stephanie and together, we would do a run up Isham Canyon, work our way across Death Valley, cut our way down Titus Canyon, head up to Crankshaft Crossing with a quick stop over at Ubehebe Crater, have a few drinks over at Goldpoint, meander our way through a car forest, stay the night at the Historic Mizpah Hotel, explore the old ghost town of Candelaria and then finished our adventures out in the Teels Marsh and ghost town of Marietta. Of course, none of the days or miles include what it took to get to the starting point or to get back home and for that, I am grateful to all our friends for joining us just the same.

Being that we did so much and took a ton of photos, I will break this up into a two separate threads with the first of which will highlight our run up Isham Canyon. Thanks to the storms that took out many of the paved roads in and around Death Valley, the trail was considerably more challenging and because of it, worthy of it's own thread. I hope you enjoy :cool:

On our way down to our starting point, Cindy and I pulled over along side the frozen Walker River. A strange sight being that it can be a roaring torrent of water during the summer...
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Doing a little sightseeing near the town of Darwin further south...
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Just love the cool rock formations out here...
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What a bummer! Back on pavement and the road is still closed from damaged caused by floods in August of last year! We thought about going around but heard the fine for getting caught was $700. Oh well, should be some good fun on the trail tomorrow...
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Day 1 : Isham Canyon
Named after a Forty-niner who died here while trying to escape Death Valley, Isham Canyon is the kind of trail that Cindy and I absolutely love. Remote and filled with all kinds of great history, it's the kind of trail that allows you to imagine what it might have been like to cross as an emigrant over 160 years ago. Of course, instead of covered wagons and oxen wearing makeshift leather boots to protect them from the sharp rocks of the Slate Range, we would get to traverse the unforgiving terrain in our modern Jeeps and mud terrain tires. And, thanks to a big storm last summer, the route through would prove to be a real challenge and a ton of fun.

After hooking up with all our friends in Ridgecrest, we topped off our tanks one last time in Trona and headed north to our trail for the day...
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Airing down at the trailhead...
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Looking out toward the Slate Range and our trail ahead...
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At the mouth of Isham Canyon...
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Time to rock-n-roll!! Here's a shot of Cindy taking on the first obstacle which was a tight squeeze around a large boulder followed by a tall ledge...
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Here a shot of Doug taking on the ledge...
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Stephanie following Cindy's lead...
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And kicking up some dust as she climbs the ledge...
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Don getting ready to make his bump up...
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And he's up!
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Moochie making his way up to the obstacles...
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And loving how well his new Nitto Trail Grapplers work on the rocks...
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10 feet up and this is what the trail ahead looks like...
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Let's throw in some people to give it scale - up top is Ray, in the middle is Stephanie and down by the big boulder is Don...
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Of course, there was a lot of this strewn all over the place for at least the next 100 yards...
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Here's a few shots of Cindy working her way up...
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Lined up to make the climb up the dry fall...
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And it's up and over just like that...
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Some shots of Doug making his way up...
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Here's Stephanie rockin it!
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Using just the shoulder lugs of her tire to get her up this rock face...
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And she up!
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Here's Don taking his turn at it - notice the broken tail light pieces on the ground. There was a lot of it everywhere...
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Just about up...
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Moochie starting his climb up...
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Having a 5.3L V8 under the hood sure made this a walk in the park...
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More pics below...
 
Moving right along...
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Imagine that, more signs of things to come...
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Doug comes a bit close to this boulder and so Moochie and Tony give a hand to help keep him away from it...
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Almost through...
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And he's up...
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Stephanie starting her run up...
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and rockin it like a pro!
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Working his way up to the next obstacle, Moochie tore a fender flare off coming around this boulder....
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Gotta love the way the tear away without doing any body damage and then can be reinstalled later...
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Up toward the front, Don gets a little spotting from Tony....
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Almost there...
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Whoa! You're digging in - gonna need to give this one a bump...
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And that's how's it's done...
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After tossing his fender in the back, Moochie makes his way up to the next obstacle...
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Getting real close...
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Squeezed by and getting setup for the climb...
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Up we go...
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Ouch!! Looks like a rock took a bite out of Moochie's quarter panel...
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Further up along the trail...
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Cindy getting Moby all twisted up...
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Doug happy to be running 40's - without em, he'd be high centered here for sure...
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Stephanie working her way up front...
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Coming around the right side of this boulder gets you real close to it but, she managed to squeak by...
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With a little spot from Tony, she's up...
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Wait - there's another tight squeeze...
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Shot of Don and Moochie taking the same line around the rock with a little help to keep them away from it...
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It's hard to tell in these pics but, between the wide and long body of the JK, increasing off camber slope you had to climb and loose sand under foot, it was pretty hard not to come real close to this pointy boulder as you worked yourself around it. Fortunately, here were a few able bodies to lend a hand...
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If you go real slow - you just might clear your license plate Moochie...
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Or not...
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What makes this trail so cool is that there's no end to the obstacles - literally one right after the other the whole way through. Here's Cindy making her climb up the next dry fall/v-notch...
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Doug starting his climb...
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Stephanie making her way up next...
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Don up next...
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And finally, Moochie walking right up...
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More pics below...
 
A few feet up the trail and we were already at the obstacle and probably the biggest set of dry falls on the trail...
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Here's Cindy setting up for her climb. Unfortunately, it's hard to gauge just how tall and steep this fall really is...
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Gotta say that we LOVE our Nitto Trail Grapplers!! They hook up so well that they allowed Cindy to just crawl up...
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Immediately after the climb, there was another tight twist with a deep wedge...
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Her first attempt had her passenger rear tire falling into a deep hole while the driver side climbed a tall rock face. This caused her front end to lift and make positive forward movement limited...
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After backing down and making a correction, she was up and on her way...
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And she's up!!
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Doug getting setup to make his climb...
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Going ballistic!!
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Houston - we have a problem...
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Can't move forward and can't move back...
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Tony hooking up a winch to back him off the ledge so that we can see what was going on...
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Let's pull him back...
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Back on flat ground, his transmission started working again just fine and so we figured he was just sitting up too vertically too long. We decided that it might be necessary to just move through the obstacle and doing that got him up without too much fuss...
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Working his way up through the twist, he lost his transmission yet again...
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Just to be safe, we decided to hook him up to Moby and just winch him up to the top. Upon closer examination, we found that he was about a quart and half low on transmission fluid...
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Getting everyone back on the move again, Stephanie lead the way up followed by Don and Moochie...
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While still rugged, the remaining trail to the top was a lot easier and without any more real obstacles in our way...
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The very last climb out wasn't really challenging per se but, being that it was covered in loose bowling ball size rocks that offer little to no traction, it was necessary to keep a steady foot and even movement forward. Too slow and you wouldn't go anywhere. Too much gas and you'd just be left spinning your wheels...
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Up on top of the Slate Range and looking down toward the Panamint Valley...
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Much like Isham Canyon, our route out would be down Fish Canyon which was named after a Father Fish who died here back in 1850. This portion of the trail is also known as the Escape Trail as it was the route that Lewis Manly and John Rogers used to lead the Bennett and Arcane families out of Death Valley and across the Slate Range...
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Father Fish was a friend of Manly is buried about a mile up from this point of the trail. Being that it was starting to get dark, we decided to forego the trek to his grave and press on to our home for the night. Here is a plaque pointing that was erected back in 1988 and points the way to his grave site...
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Time to air up...
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Home for the night in Beatty, NV!! To an AWESOME day out on the trail - CHEERS!!
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Click on the link below to see more photos from our weekend adventures:
Cindy's Birthday Run 2014 - Part 2 : Titus Canyon to Marietta
 
This is a great trail! I did get kissed by a couple of rocks. :eek: Thanks for leading us on another adventure!
 
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the pics are sweet damn i wish we had trails like that out east :doh: it's all good thought very nice place to wheel
 
What an awesome weekend. Thanks for sharing. :thumb:

I dream of when this driver and rig will be capable/ready to handle these kinds of trails. Maybe someday. Till then, I live through your adventures.
 
Wow! Very nice. Looks like a great trail.

Moochie (and all of us for that matter) should get some expensive painted metal fenders and attach them sheet metal of the jeep to avoid tearing off those lame plastic ones. :crazyeyes:
 
Now that's a birthday ride! Looks like it was allot of fun.



Sent from my Nexus 7 using WAYALIFE mobile app
 
That has gotta be some of the best shots I've seen to date. and as for trails frickin sweet, couldn't imagine running my jeep threw there.
Meant to ask before but whats the sig. of the coons tail Puck.:thumb:

Signed hum drum east coast
 
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