Hunting a Bird in Death Valley (Halloween 2014)

Happy Halloween!

Since it is October 31st I planned something a little mysterious for you:

Since taking an HD video was why I did this hike again, I did not make as much an emphasis with taking pictures since I had already done that years ago. However, you can find some of the pictures I took this time around at the following link:

The Death Valley Hike Pictures (Flickr)

A)Motivation

I’ve think I have told the story of a few people that have commented to me or told me via e-mail that they think the hikes I do are okay, but they really just care about the movie locations I have shown. I don’t usually respond to something like that because my response would be something like, “Of course you don’t like the hikes I show because you can’t do them.” 

This is one of those hikes that I did that if you can’t find something interesting in it then I guess I just have to give up this blog for good. I mean, if you don’t like this one then I have two words for you, and they are not "Happy Birthday"! In my continuing quest for death deviance, I put my body and soul in an extreme harsh environment and there is indifference? What’s wrong with you people?!

B)Style

If you have been around this blog long enough or looked at some of my earlier blog entries you probably recognized this one. I finally got to do this one again after years of wanting to do it one more time to get a better video of it. On my original Youtube channel I did an experimental three part video of this hike. It was first set of videos I really put a lot of effort into. I had some good ideas with it, and I guess it was okay for the early days of Youtube, but it had two issues with it that made it lack the style Youtube was and is known for. One would be that the quality was not all that great since the camcorder used tape to record. 

The other bigger issue was that it was just too long. Trimming and editing videos down has been a very important thing I have learned over the past few years. There are many videos I have done that are hard for me to watch now because I know I should have edited them down a lot more. In this video, I cut out a lot, but even so it is still quite long. 

The last half of the video was done in one take. That was something I had planned to do knowing it would be slightly shaky after a four hour hike to the spot and moving around on a dangerous incline. Yeah, I actually did fall down at one point, but I recovered pretty well. As I fell, I remembered to just protect the camcorder and kept going. Of course, all those years learning how to control my fall in martial arts training helped. 

Btw, the video was shot at 1080p at 60 fps. Please watch it at the best quality settings your system can handle. 

C)The Hike 

Since I had done this one before about eight years ago I kind of knew what to expect; I’ll link the blog entries for that hike that has my original thoughts from the first time below. My brother and I spent the night in Lone Pine. I wanted to spend the night in Trona (or Ridgecrest) since the drive to the trailhead would have been a lot more direct, but I found out the road from Trona to where we would start the hike was closed. So, our friends met us at Lone Pine early in the morning, and we drove to Towne Pass where the hike began. 

The video petty much shows you how it went. It took about 8 hours to get to the site and back. You can add on an extra thirty minutes for me since I was doing video and pictures there and back again. 

The ups and downs of the hike are still annoying. That 1,000 ft. of elevation gain coming back from the plane is rough, and I had forgotten about the difficulty of some of the terrain there. Since you know you have to do it to get out of there (no cell phone reception), we just kept plugging away until we reached Towne Summit again. It was still difficult from there, but at that point you know you can finish the hike. The final part coming down that wall you initially climb is probably the roughest part. It’s a lot hotter there, and the sagebrush/cactus plants attack your legs if you are not careful.

This time around I was not as dehydrated as the first time. There was some cloud cover at times to block the sun, but it was still a warm Death Valley day with the temperature being about 90 degrees. In any case, I was glad when it was over. 

D)The Albatross 

The actual goal of the hike and what makes it unique and mysterious is the plane crash itself. I covered that before, and you can read about it in the links I provided below. I think the general story is well known: this SA-16 aircraft attempted to fly from Idaho to San Diego, it was a C.I.A. aircraft, one of the engines malfunctioned, and the plane crashed where it is today, but somehow the crew all survived. 

In the book Grumman Albatross: a history of the Legendary Seaplane by Wayne Mutza there is a short section about this flight and crash. He seems to be skeptical of the idea that the pilot and crew jumped out of the plane and then the plane flew for around twenty miles to land mostly intact on the slope near Towne Summit. I can understand that skepticism, but I am almost equally skeptical of anyone being on that plane and not dying on impact. It’s almost a miracle in any case.

So, the sequence of events of what happened to that aircraft and crew as they flew over Death Valley is one of those mysteries I’m not sure we will ever know for sure. It sure would be fun to hear from one of those crew members if any are still alive. If anyone has anymore info out this or comes across unclassified information I am all ears, but it is not something I intend to pursue on my own. 

I hate to report that someone about a year ago did some graffiti by carving their intials/name and the date they were there into the side of the aircraft. WHY? I could probably shame them by mentioning who it was since I have pictures of the registry names in the survival cache left there, but I’ll stay away from that.

E)Closing Thoughts 

I was a little snotty/sarcastic above in my opening remarks, but I should make it clear that I don’t recommend people doing this hike. Unless you are well prepared and experienced in hiking scrambles in extreme environments do not even think about doing this one. They call this area Death Valley for a reason.

I’ll never do this hike again. If someone wants to fly me in and out on a helicopter then I might be willing, but I am done with this one. With that said, it is hikes like this that make this blog worthwhile. 

I do have alternative video footage I shot. I have a few ideas somewhere down the road I could put together for a more narrative approach. If I ever came across more information on this flight…It would be fun to actually fly around in a real SA-16...but I’m not in the mood to spend more of my time and money on this sort of thing. A lot of it depends on the interest I get on this one.

The original hike blogs:

Death Valley, Towne Peak, and the Mystery of the SA-16 Albatross

The CIA's Death Valley Albatross

The main historical account about the crash can be found HERE.

The following music was taken from Incompetech.com for the video: Hitman, Opressive Gloom, Tenebrous Brothers Carnival - Prelude.

Death Valley, Towne Peak, and the Mystery of the SA-16 Albatross (Part 4)

Lets Get Ready to Descend

We spent some time on the summit relaxing. The summit register at Towne Peak had some interesting notes to read. Many notes went back to the late 60's early 70's. Although some of the pictures you see below look the same as in the other recent entries. The angles of them are slightly different and I like them for that reason. I decided to include some of those.

Below is Telescope Peak in the distance.

Again, if you wanted to head to Trona and Ridgecrest you would go as far as you can see that way. The road taking you to Lone Pine heads to the right of the picture.
This note I read was interesting because it was written in the beginning of September of 1968. The father and boys note they had trouble and had to get a ranger to help them out. I can imagine that time of the year would be very difficult.
Again, this shows you the area we would have to descend to following the ridge.
They SA-16 from the summit.

This will be the last entry on our getting to the summit of Towne Peak. Then we are off to the site of the remains of the aircraft itself.

(Edit: I did this hike again in 2014. I took a video of it which can be found here: Hunting a Bird in Death Valley)

Death Valley, Towne Peak, and the Mystery of the SA-16 Albatross (Part 3)

The Summit

(GPS:N36 25.190 W117 19.095)

The next stretch was up one of the steeper parts of the hike to the actual summit.

We had to go up this thing.
Once on top of this it wasn't that difficult to get to the summit. We actually made pretty good time to get there. It took us about 2 hours 20 minutes. It was a minor victory as part of the whole hike. Like I mentioned in the previous entry, what was good was doing this early in the morning. The longer the hike would last, as far as the time we would be under the hot sun, the worse things would be. At the summit there was a slight breeze so we were feeling pretty good.
The above is looking to the southwest. Below, we are looking northeast.

It was nice to see Olancha Peak to the west which parallels the 395 highway below it.

Off in the distance we could see the snow capped Easter Sierra Range. Of course, we ended up staying at Lone Pine underneath all that off the 395; it is about 60 miles away.

I can't tell for sure, but I have highlighted two areas with dots below. The first one to the left I think is Mt. Langley. The second dot to the right is Mt. Whitney.

From the summit we could see our final destination again. We would have to continue to follow the ridgeline and descend to it.

In my next entry I shall show a few more shots from the summit before we continue on.

(Edit: I did this hike again in 2014. I took a video of it which can be found here: Hunting a Bird in Death Valley)

Death Valley, Towne Peak, and the Mystery of the SA-16 Albatross (Part 2)

Moving On Up

We continued along the ridgeline. There were various hills we had to cover. It was still early in the morning. Being in Death Valley one is always concerned about how hot it will get. I knew early in the morning that would not be a problem, but the trip back to the car will be.
I noticed some interesting rock formations as we went along.
This protruding rock seemed like the most interesting thing.
This is leading into one of the more steeper parts of the hike. It was actually easier just to follow the ridgeline to get to the base of the steep part than to walk more directly at it.

This is more looking to the southwest.

The day was a bit hazy looking in each direction. It always seems it is on the days I hike.

Before ending this part of the series I thought I would show a picture of our final destination from where we were at this point of the hike. After you get past the first ridge you can see the SA-16. In the following picture you can barely see it. There is also Olancha Peak in the distance to the right.

It is obvious to the naked eye right as you get up to the ridgeline at the beginning of the hike. However, to get there we still had to get up to Towne Peak first. So, it is time to climb one of the steep spots of the hike.

(Edit: I did this hike again in 2014. I took a video of it which can be found here: Hunting a Bird in Death Valley)

Death Valley, Towne Peak, and the Mystery of the SA-16 Albatross (Part 1)

The Ridgeline

Okay, finally, one of my big epic hikes. This is one of those things that I am going to spend a lot of time and entries writing about this month. I have a lot of pictures and a few video’s I have created for this blog. Since this hike was such a unique quest for me, and very few go to this location, I am going all out to detail everything.

First, before I get started, I want to give credit to the one known as Otis Pug for creating his “Klemmer Challenge” in geocaching. Although I had heard about this area before, it was not until I read about this challenge Otis Pug had put out that I decided to go for it! Of everything I did in geocaching, this hike and the hike to Snow Lake were the ones I loved the most. There is one more he did like this that a friend of mine who geocaches wants to do one day. So, I hope to do another one of his challenges in the future.

It was around January, 2006 that my brother and I had talked about doing this hike. Since we don’t like to hike on snow if we can get around it, we waited until May 13, 2006. As it turned out, I do not think the snow would have been a problem at all earlier in the year, but we did not know what to expect.

We drove to Lone Pine the day before. We tried to make the best of sleeping, and for me, it is the worst part of any hike. I never feel I have a good night of sleep before a big hike. When I wake up, I rarely feel good. This was no exception. It took me forever to get to sleep, and then when I woke up at around 4am I felt I had been hit over the head.

We made the long drive into Death Valley. It was very dark and creepy because we were driving into an area we had never been before. We made these long turns and could see nothing outside. Only the headlights on the road showed where we were. It was much more interesting to see what this was like on the way back.

We reached the turnoff at just around 5:10am. We had flashlights and were ready to storm the first 1000 feet to the first ridgeline. However, as I got out of the car the area started to light up a bit. I was glad to leave the flashlights in the car since they would just be more weight.

We went up to the ridgeline in pretty good time. It was 5:50am. Here are some of the shots looking back to the car.

When we came back to this point later it was really shocking to see that small dot and how much we still had to go to get back to the car.

This picture over the ridgeline was taken in a southwestern direction.

Here we finally saw our first destination: TOWNE PEAK. It is one of the high points left of center. There will be more about this later.

Another nice morning shot.

The key to this hike is, after you finally get past the first 1000 feet, you just hug the ridgeline and follow the hills to the top.

Our strategy was to not go directly over the hills, but angle slightly to the right of each of them. Some were easier than others.

This is looking back to where we came from.

I will continue with the next entry in this series tomorrow. There will be many of them and I am still working on all of this as I go. I will do more explaining about the mystery site as we go on. You can actually see the final destination after you get over the first ridge. However, I will save that until later.

(Edit: I did this hike again in 2014. I took a video of it which can be found here: Hunting a Bird in Death Valley).