Panamint City

[Endless Trails]

@4lowlance, Travis Aragon, Jeremy Rowell, and I hiked to Panamint City this past weekend Feb 27 - Mar 1. We camped at Ballarat Store Thursday night so we could get to the trail head earlyish and rested.

The trail starts up Surprise Canyon where a good portion of the lower 2 miles is spent walking in water. We chose to bring separate shoes to change out of half way up.

There was some tricky sections where you were getting up on the rocks, scrambling up ledges, or trying not to slip and die while hiking straight up the waterfalls. yo know, normal stuff to do with a 40lb pack.

There is water sorces about half way up for refilling your packed water. It looks like it goes dry early but it showed back up probably a half mile later. I got to the dry point and was down to half a liter of the 3 I brought. I back tracked to a point where I could filter some. This is pretty much the last water until the city.

The top 4ish miles is walking in this junk. Not much of a trail or path, just picking the smoothest line through the gravel/sand/rocks.

This is the point where your spirits get lifted again after a few miles of solid class 2 fun / grind. The first view of the chimney which is the bottom of town.

We hiked straight to the Hilton as that was what we could see. We got there, took off the packs, and I set off to find the water source.

This was my Strava for the hike in. This includes my back track and to and from the water source above the cabin.
To be continued...

 

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This is the Panamint City Hilton. It is the second nicest of the current habitable cabins. I don't know why I didn't get any inside pictures. It had a elevated platform inside large enough for one to sleep on, and room for 3 more on the floor. It had a wood burning stove in the living area to heat it but the is no good wood in the immediate area. You would need to hike with a saw up into the trees. We burnt some of the dead scrub brush to warm the place up in the morning, but that would be impossible to keep going at night. It had a back bedroom with a bed with a bunch of questionable sleeping bags covering it. None of us chose to use that option. It does have a stove that looked to be converted to run on green cans, but we didn't bring any so we didn't try it. It also had some pans. Water supply was a large cistern at 5 min hike away up the road across the wash up and to the right.

 

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I forgot I had this picture of @4lowlance modeling his Jet Boil in ful JC Penny pose like a good influencer inside the Hilton.

 

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I did a horrble job taking pictures of the other cabins in the valley. The overflow cabin located up and behind the Hilton could be cleaned and used in a pinch. It wasn't in a clean state when we were up there, but it did have this rad fire pit area with a great view of the valley. Even if you got stuck at the Hilton, it might be worth while to collect some wood (not parts from cabins or live trees) and use this as the night activities area.

 

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The Castle - Probably top two of my top 5 adopt a cabins. The trail up, if you were to go straight here would start across from what used to be a large stone cabin before you get to the chimney. There is another trail from the overlook cabin along the side of the hill to front of this one.
The spring is piped all the way down to the hose in the tub. Good space inside and some nice bench seating outside. All the mine stuff and relics were rad, but I think this brought it over the top and would make a return trip worth it. If only for the "Vibe" (as the kids call it these days) this place puts off. As soon as Travis and I turned the corner and saw the tub, fire pit, and front porch whe both basically said, "we are moving".

Yes it is a shitty picture but you get the idea.
I could have spent way more time in here. The spring water was mid to high 60s I would guess. I couldn't imagine how rad it would be if we would have warmed the water with the wood burning water heater.

 

[Endless Trails]

And now for some cool stuff...