Travelogue

Along the 4WD Papoose Flat RoadAfter leaving Eureka Dunes our next stop was Andrew and Celeste’s house in Bishop, but we didn’t want to arrive too early because they were working until 5:00.

I suggested to Herb that we should do the Narrows and Papoose Flat 4WD Road which would take us from the Big Pine / Death Valley Road up and over the mountains and into Big Pine - a 26 mile, 3 ½ hour adventure. We had done this ride before and it was very fun and scenic.

The first part of the drive took us up through a long, narrow canyon to the Narrows, a high-walled gap in the dark laminated rock. The ride wasn’t too bad, but I wouldn’t exactly call it Easy. Also, the route can get pretty confusing because the Forest Road names in the 4WD Guide we were using didn’t always match the ones on the signposts along the way. Fortunately, Herb had our old tracks from our last time through on Gaia, a mapping application, so we could pretty much follow our breadcrumbs.

Papoose FlatThe highlight of the ride was arriving at Papoose Flat, a unique and otherworldly landscape with granite spires somewhat randomly strewn throughout the desert scrub. One of the granite outcrops even had a large arch, which I thought looked like a map of the U.S. with Florida on the wrong side. You could see the Sierra Nevada mountains through the arch.

The Flat, which lies at the crest of the Inyo Mountains which separate Saline Valley from the Owens Valley, was once a food gathering place for the Paiute Indians, who spent the summer and fall in the Inyo Mountains gathering pinyon nuts and killing game for winter.

After leaving the Flat, we descended through a series of switchbacks back to where we started. Some sections were so rocky that we had to get out and construct, or repair, existing rock ramps to smooth things out a bit.

Along the 4WD Papoose Flat RoadReally interesting ride, but if this was classified as Easy, I’m not sure how anxious I am to get on a Moderate. Plus, I think that the road conditions had gotten worse since the last time we did this.

We got to Big Pine with still some time to kill, so we went to our favorite truck wash in Bishop and washed away the inches of sand and dust we had accumulated during our last week of off-roading.

Once that was done, we texted Andrew that we were on our way. He was so excited to see us that he was actually waiting outside at the end of the driveway for us. The feeling was mutual.