Ashford Peak, Desert Hound Peak, Ashford Mine Death Valley

I'd been back in civilization for a whopping four days following the epic six day Thanksgiving Turktacular trip to Escalante but an open weekend is an open weekend and I wasn't about to sit around at home. 

Since I finished the Sierra Club Desert Peak Section list last year I've been looking for new lists to work on and one of those has I've been toying with is the list of peaks which are in the Andy Zdon Desert Summits book.

Zdon Upper: http://www.peakbagger.com/list.aspx?lid=-924180
Zdon Lower: http://www.peakbagger.com/List.aspx?lid=-924181

The guide itself I've never cared for since it doesn't include any maps which makes it a lot of work if you are looking for things to climb vs checking for beta on a specific peak.  But hey, Peakbagger to the rescue and it is the closest thing we have to a Secor like reference to the desert.

Jen Blackie and I decided to head out to the cluster of peaks around Ashford Junction west of Shoshone and see what we could get done despite the short days this time of year.

On the plus side that meant the drive was only going to be about 4 hours which is a nice change of pace.  We might have even gotten to sleep before midnight *except* I managed to forget my boots meaning by the time we backtracked and grabbed them we didn't actually get away until 9 pm.  Ah well...


We ended up sleeping along a dirt road south of Shoshone and driving the last hour or so in the morning.  We decided to start with Ashford and Desert Hound since they could be done in a nice 4k gain loop and included a rather extensive looking mine we could explore.


Ashford Mill ruins are right across Badwater Road from where you access Ashford Canyon and we stopped by to take a look.


There isn't much there except for a few signs and a bit more useful to us a rather nice pit toilet.


The road up to Ashford Canyon was fairly easy as these things go.  The jeep didn't struggle at all and I could have gotten any high clearance vehicle up to the end of the road with just a slight bit of care.


The road ends at a small wilderness sign and a deliberate looking scattering of rocks.  We were alone at first but soon heard someone jouncing up the road behind us.


The guy had run into an issue with his tailgate which explained the loud clanking noise we'd heard.  No idea what the mattress was about as he said he was working locally and spending the weekends crawling around Death Valley.

He was there to explore the mine which was our plan as well but we had peaks to hit first.  Our plan was to climb the ridge on the right side of the picture above, grab Ashford, then Desert Hound, then descend to the mine and look around a bit before taking the old access road out.  We left the car around 9 am.


The ridge is fairly easy going and climbs for about 2,500' offering increasingly nice views out towards Telescope. 



A few times we had to pick out way around rocks but generally you're walking on top of a nice ridge.


Once the ridge flattened out we had a view of Ashford.  Such that it was.


We found a slightly mangled register on the fairly non descript summit when we arrived at 11:10 am.  From here Desert Hound looked far more significant though we weren't looking forward to the 500 ft drop plus 1,400 ft gain on the far side of the saddle.


It went easy though and we were on the second summit by 1 pm.

Desert Hound had a register going back to 1978 when a slightly more active Sierra Club Desert Peak Section apparently led a trip here.



From the summit we looked down at where Desert Hound Mine was marked on the map but couldn't see anything from a distance that looked worth checking out.  

From https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/deva/section4c5.htm

In other words, not many people will want (or be able) to take the effort to visit the Desert Hound Mine.

Nor should they. The Desert Hound is the most unsightly place in Death Valley. It can best be described as a large garbage pit. Anyone who has lingering doubts about the romanticism of depression-era mining, on a one-man scale, will be totally absolved of such delusions by a visit to the Desert Hound.

Sounds about right.

There was a tunnel marked high on the ridge between Ashford and Scottys that looked promising but we were limited on daylight and we wanted time to explore the main Ashford Mine.


We followed a track I'd picked up off Peakbagger that went down a ridge and then dropped into a gully leading straight through the mine.  In retrospect the ridge to the south of our track was actually a better choice.


Both the ridge and the gully were covered in a lot of loose crap.


Jen made the mistake of running afoul of this bloody hell plant.  See all the small hairs?  They stick to everything, poke you through clothing, and generally make life unpleasant.


Further down the canyon turned into a beautiful combination of sand and solid white rock.


We also started to find adits everywhere though they all didn't go in very far or else they'd collapsed or been filled in.


Which brought us to the main site of Ashford Mine.



From https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/deva/section4c5.htm

The main mine site itself is situated high on the west side of the Black Mountains, overlooking Death Valley, and the old road to the site has been washed out for many years. Access today is only possible via an arduous hike about one mile from the end of the road up to the mine site. Structures at the main complex consist of one collapsed shack, an outhouse, a large office and cookhouse building, two wooden bunkhouses, a tin shed, a headframe and ore bin, and the tramway towers and terminal. All of these structures date from the 1930-1940 period of mining.


The buildings were the biggest draw right off the bat.  According to the writeup above this would be the cookhouse on the right and bunkhouses on the left. 


There was a small loop dug out right behind the cooking area which I can only assume was used as their lauder


In the next room we found a register stored in an old refrigerator to protect it.





We explored a number of entrances around but none of them went very far in or had any interesting artifacts.



The other structures had mostly collapsed but there were signs that someone had been over the area trying to make it safer.


We found two deep shafts north of the buildings.  The more prominent one had been covered in a new -ish looking metal mesh to prevent anyone from falling to their likely death.  The other one was just lying open so obviously the effort expended was limited or else someone had taken the mesh.

We explored for a while but didn't find anything else of note.


We dropped into the canyon and met what remains of the road down below but it soon disappears into the main wash.

We reached the jeep after dark and decided to camp here rather than take our chances finding something along Jubilee Pass Road.  Being in Death Valley we couldn't have fires but we had a nice evening making camp pizza and drinking our modified caipirinha drinks under a surprisingly bright supermoon.  Tomorrow we planned to grab a few peaks along Jubilee Pass Road.