The Valley of Death

Life tastes so much sweeter after the spirit of darkness has summoned you. Three thirty in the morning November 5th, after driving eight and a half hours, the unfastened road finally took hold of us.

The gazing of the moon and how the Panamint Valley to the East with it's Slate Range glistens under a star-spangled sky became secondary.  For a split second the sandy road catapulted us into a spinout with about twelve seconds of mayor fish tailing - even feeling at times, only two wheels on the road. 

I prayed. 

I did not scream. 

I did not say a word. 

My eight-year-old had woken from a deep slumber in the backseat, and was now starring through the two front seats with lightning-bolds in her eyes. 

"Das Schwert im Herzen, mit tausend Schmerzen blickst auf Deines Kindes Tod." Faust

"Mephisto says to Death that for him to protect her, the Beyonder must die." 

Spirit of Darkness you have summoned me . Here I am the partos of darkness are open and the shadows of the dead hunt over the earth.

Thirty minutes later we fell asleep for two and a half hours at the Wildrose Campground. 

Breakfast at the Stovepipe Wells Village and afterward we had to empty our bag-packs and had to surrender to our leaders everything they thought frivolous or not necessary. They got rid of tents, clothes, shoes, food and more. In fact we had a sleeping-bag, a tarp and water mixed with some food weighing about 10 pounds left over. A delight for my back.


 I trusted we would be okay. 


These people are hard-core, they are survivors, they are the modern age explorers. 


From the Stovepipe Wells Village after we received through the ranger station our wilderness-passes we left in four four-wheel drive cars and found ourselves on roads so sandy and rocky that we spent a lot of time building the path ahead. Someone was joking that if you spent more time  building the road than sitting in the car you might as well walk.


We spent about three hours to get to the trailhead and after we had secured all cars in different locations (complicated pythagoras calculation, I did not want to even attempt to figure it out) we forged forward on foot. 


The landscape brought us through open wash, riparian forest, high desert and deep slot canyons. We saw amazing geology, petroglyphs, and pioneer inscriptions-and some of us even spotted wild horses and bighorn-sheep. 


Springs were suppose to supply us with water, unfortunately only the first gave sufficient supply of this life sustaining elixir. We used filters and iodine and it tasted awful. Secretly we were hoping the second spring would be more tasty.

Unfortunately the second spring turned out to be even less worthy since a mountain-lion had just feasted on an antelope and the water looked sluggish and our surgeon on board claimed it undrinkable. 


After another very cold night and a fabulous home-freeze-dried meal of rice, corn and hash we headed through the most amazing mountains, complete with distant alluvial fans where DylanGrace was able to point out the easiest lowest slope we shall climb. 


Our retired surgeon still so fit I would let him operate on me if I needed an amputation on the trail. He had moleskin on his feet as a preventive measure. Please see picture to right.

We finally arrived at the Petroglyphs and were not disappointed. The canyons forced me to my knees with tears in my eyes. Twenty miles we hiked in three days and when we arrived back at the trailhead, we had to wait another hour and a half and then drove another 3 hours through the sand again. All along my tummy was so tight with fear in fact that is how I keep thin and in shape-pure fear. Stovepipe Wells Village seemed as an oasis yet we still had to drive back to the Bay Area until 3 AM that morning. Believe it or not DylanGrace and I were on time at 7:50 AM to pick up carpool kids for school.


Desert Survivors check them out if you are like me running from death.http://www.desert-survivors.org/current.html

he angle of repose (sometimes incorrectly confused with the 'angle of internal friction') is an engineering property of granular materials. It is the maximum angle of a stable slope determined by friction, cohesion and the shapes of the particles.

When bulk granular materials are poured onto a horizontal surface, a conical pile will form. The internal angle between the surface of the pile and the horizontal surface is known as the angle of repose and is related to the density, surface area and shapes of the particles, and the coefficient of friction of the material. Material with a low angle of repose forms flatter piles than material with a high angle of repose. In other words, the angle of repose is the angle a pile forms with the ground.An alluvial fan is a fan-shaped deposit formed where a fast flowing stream flattens, slows, and spreads typically at the exit of a canyon onto a flatter plain. A convergence of neighboring alluvial fans into a single apron of deposits against a slope is called a bajada, or compound alluvial fan.^[1]

Hypsiglena torquata

Martina:

I have identified the snake we saw on October 3 on the morning hike.  It
was a night snake (Hypsiglena torquata).  The picture in the book
clearly shows the black stripe in the face, extending all the way from
past the eye to the mouth.  The markings on the back also conform.  
The painting in the book was done of a snake Contra Costa County, 
which includes Briones.

It is a nocturnal snake, not often seen during the day.  It is venomous in
the grooved teeth in the back of the upper jaw, and uses its venom to
kill frogs and lizards.  Its striking behavior is probably its normal
hunting practice, but we certainly riled it up!

I think we were lucky to see it.


Steve Tabor, President
Desert Survivors
PO Box 20991
Oakland, CA 94620-0991

GEO-SYNCHRONOUS?---WHAAAT?

Review of the Desert Survivors Route-Finding Seminar

By default my daughter eight years old and I strolled the Solano Stroll and stumbled upon Mr. Steve Tabor's booth and his Desert Survivors. A short glance at the schedule for the Autumn of 2009 convinced me that we needed to join immediately. Any organization who will go in after Burning Man's big bash to the Black Rock Desert to work on preservation and up-grading was an organization I could put my name down for full-heartedly.

We had a great time Saturday. We hiked 5 miles with the Desert Survivors through Briones State Park. I had never been there. The park itself takes getting used too and we did find a few very scenic look-outs and some unexpected wildlife such as of now unidentified snake which had attack maneuvers like a rattler and made moves as being mesmerized by a snake-charmer. It was an amazing trip and learning experience. The steepest we hiked was at 30% and I realized that I will have to resole my 20 year old hiking-boots which I almost use daily once we get ready for a real trek with them.

I met amazing people i.e. a man from Sweden his name was David Jorgens, a retired mathematician who travels the world to teach mathematics. He was recently in Tanzania and between seminars hiked up Mt. Kilimanjaro. His group were Italian gymnasts who all wanted to run up the mountain.

Well, guess what happened? Who was the only one who made it? Of course Mr. Jorgens. He is in his seventies. The Gymnasts ran up the mountain and after the fourth day were laying by the side of the path with acute mountain sickness. Their leaders made them go back and Mr. Jorgens was the only one who got to reach the summit. What a great example of the tortoise and the hare.

The morning was dedicated to the compass and that triangulation is key for that maneuvering tool. We used U.S. Geological Survey, Topographic maps. Scales and miles - versus kilometers and squares. Learned that we need to think about declamation=which means that the magnetic North declines about 15 1/2 feet north on every map.So the magnetic north is not the same as the true north. The map colors: Green is vegetation, blue is water and white are valleys. Lines signal the level; the closer they are together the steeper the hill. Elevation lines go up as an app-ex and a drainage ditches are angling from high to low.

Meanwhile western bluebirds, possibly young residents, not migrators, were surrounding us and playing with one another. Most lovely.

The afternoon we learned about global positioning and that there are 12 satellites in orbit. They were put there in the sixties and were used for air-bombings in Vietnam. They are geo-synchronous and move the same as the earth. They communicate with each other and us down here. It is an electronic signal instead of a compass-line. At that point DylanGrace asked "How do people know that the earth moves?" One of the participants simple said: " That is a different seminar!"

Hope to see you November 20 in the North Mesquite Wilderness.

Martina Konietzny

Desolation Wilderness

I had this incredible chance to get away with a few great women from our kid's school. Unbeknownst to me with this trip I fulfilled one of my many dreams: To hike the "Desolation Wilderness".

Now I just have to bicycle-ride through Cuba and climb Machu Piccuh.

Yom Kippur-My Day Of Atonement

Once a year I swim through Lake Anza, passed the lines and signs saying "No Swimming, No wading". Over to the big rock and once all around. I leave all regrets, wrong turns, things said and unsaid, harm done - in the middle of the lake.

Sundown the water was rippled and when I got out it took me hours to warm up. I ate dinner with a fleece blanket wrapped around me and two sleeping-bags.

Spirit clean new year can begin. My favorite holiday in the Jewish tradition.

Teddy in the Wilderness

My daughter and I were getting ready for our adventure trip to the Indian Grinding Rock State Park and of course Teddy needed a fishing and hiking outfit. A local garage sale had small baby clothes available and the smoking father of toddler twins tried to help her pick out the right clothing and asked DylanGrace :"Is your teddy a "he" or is she a "she", while holding up a tiny "Bob the Builder" T-shirt?" DylanGrace answered enlightened: "He is really both. He is a SHAPESHIFTER!"

The grown-ups burst into laughter.

Rumford Versus Clabber Girl

Here is something I did not know and I find important. 

For years I have not used deodorant because of the aluminum content.

 Now I have found out while reading my beloved Dr. Northrup that we also need to watch out for it in the baking powder.

All my lovely baking friends with your incredible "Pflaumenkuchen"

please make sure to use Rumford and not Clabber Girl.