7 min read camping

Off-road in Death Valley, 2023

Striped Butte behind Geologist Cabin in Death Valley, California

It's been over a month, since we drove Death Valley again, but I'm just getting around to sharing details from the trip. This was the 3rd year in a row a group of friends and I made the trek Death Valley for to explore the park in our 4x4's. My capturing of these trips is pretty hodgepodge but I’m trying to make the most of this platform to share the content I captured. You’ll see underlined text here and there where I link to a relevant 360º photo, for example. This year we began our journey outside of Trona...

Wildflowers near Trona, CA, outside of Death Valley

The trip plan

Here's how we go about these trips... We typically prowl YouTube for route inspiration and one of us will put a route together on Gaia GPS and share the route with the group. We all drive our own vehicle and bring our own camping gear. We drive our route, exploring the varied terrain, old mines, cabins and the numerous geological features. Toward the end of each day we attempt to find a cool campsite before sundown—though we are not always successful... Finally, our best good friend, Mark breaks out his skottle and cooks for everyone… 🤤 Then we get the whisky out for dessert by the fire!

Day 1

Death Valley, California

I think the path we hit first was called South Park Canyon Road (I say 'I think' because many of these points of interest and roads in Death Valley seemed to be named something different depending on which map you're looking at). There were a number of cool cabins along this pass, starting with Stone Cabin, which is built up on the side of a hill. I don't know if I'd want to stay in there... but it was pretty cool to see.

Take a 360º tour of Stone Cabin

After leaving Stone Cabin we hit a pretty sketchy, narrow pass with a nice drop on the left side. This is a perfect example of why you probably wouldn't want to take a larger vehicle off road in Death Valley—I'm not I would be comfortable driving this road in a larger truck… 😅

Then we poked our head in a little mine—there are hundreds, if not thousands of abandoned mines in Death Valley.

More cabins and would be campsites passed us by along the increasingly mountainous trail. We finally made camp in Clair Camp, a mining area below World Beater Cabin (which was unfortunately occupied for the night). Mark cooked us up some delicious steaks and we settled in.

Fading light in the mountains of Death Valley

Day 2

We packed up camp then rolled into Ballarat, a small trading outpost. From there we headed south and then into Goler Canyon, a rocky canyon with a surprising amount of water running down the wash we were driving along (and wildflowers galore!).

From there we finally made our way to Barker Ranch, which we had talked about visiting for years. Barker Ranch is where Charles Manson and his "family" were hiding out when they were finally busted.

My friends posing in front of Barker Ranch, Death Valley

We then traveled north toward Striped Butte, a beautiful geologic feature of the park. Along the way we stopped at Russel Camp and Geologist Cabin, which has a perfect view of the Striped Butte.

Then we drove down into one of the lowest points of the park, past the Devils Golf Course, to Furnace Creek. By then it was time to start finding a campsite. We were too low in elevation to sleep comfortably in that heat so we decided to gain some elevation and head toward Panamint Springs. It went from temps in the 90's in Furnace Creek down to the 60's by the time we reached our campsite at Boxcar Cabin. We met a guy solo-traveling on his motorcycle camping at the cabin. It was pretty late by the time we made camp so we ended up just heating some hot dogs on a camp stove instead of getting out the whole skottle setup. At some point I’m going to need to outfit my 4Runner with more lights for driving at night like this…

Day 3

We decided to make it our mission to get out to Saline Valley Hot Springs... We made the long trek over from Boxcar Cabin. We've been there before, but knowing there's bathroom and shower facilities makes it a great spot to hit in the middle of a multi-day camping trip. Plus, it's just nice to take a soak. Apart from the wild ass, the hot springs attract nudists so I opted to not take any photos... 🫣

A wild burro in Death Valley, CA

On our way out someone stopped us coming the other direction and asked if we could assist a motorcyclist who had taken a spill further up the road. Sure enough, it was the guy that was staying in Boxcar Cabin the night before. It took him a while to get back on his bike, but we escorted him out of the north end of the park and onto paved road. We fueled up in Big Pine and headed south to find a campsite across from the Sierras.

We ended up camping in a spot we had been to a year ago—an abandoned pump station of some kind outside of Independence. This area has a spectacular view of the Sierras so I setup my tripod and grabbed some night shots and a morning time-lapse.

We covered a ton of mileage on this trip—over 325 miles, spanning almost the whole length of the enormous park. It was our third such trip to Death Valley, but there is still a huge amount we have yet to explore. I look forward to the next one!