By Schuyler Smith (KJ6NAT)
I lead a trail run for the Toyota 120 group in November of 2010. We ended up having 11 rigs and about 25 people. It was a great group of people to run trails with and it turned out to be a great trip. At that time I was one of the few drivers on the trip without a ham radio liscense and because of that I caught alot of grief from the "hams" in the other vehicles. I did however, have CB radio as did my friend Mark who was located at the tail end of the caravan so knowing when everyone turned and relaying messages worked fine. I had been considering getting my ham liscense for a while but hadn't taken the time to study for the technician test prior to the November Death Valley (DV) run. After this trip though, I knew I needed to get licensed and buy a radio so I took the test at the end of the month in Feb 2011 (at TRW) and passed. (KJ6NAT) Shortly afterward I picked up an Yaesu FT-60 HT and a Yaesu 350AR mobile rig, both of which I have been very happy with. Jon (KJ6IRM) recently passed his General test and got to make HF contacts during the trip on his new Yaesu 857D & ATAS antenna.
Given the success of the first trip I now feel obligated to plan further big trips. There are always trail runs being organized by a few people here and there, but from the sound of it, our group wanted to do another and/or annual DV run. So I decided to head out with no particular plan to explore some trails I hadn't run at the southern end of the park at the beginning of April 2011. Jon brought his 08 Toyota 4Runner and we went exploring. Here is a copy of the trail report:
Went out this past weekend Fri-Sun (Apr 1-3) for a 3day DV run. I hadn't explored much of the southern end of the park before so I am calling this a PRE-prerun for a future trip. Jon came along with his 4Runner and we headed off exploring.
We started out of Ballarat and then crossed the Panamints via Goler Wash. We got a bit of a late start on the trail and found the sunset was catching up to us. We came across some folks who had somehow busted their control arm (not quite sure what that meant at the time). The truck was an infinity (stock I think) and they said they were limping along. How they could limp along with a broken control arm neither of us understood. They had a second vehicle with them and weren't too bothered. It was getting dark and we needed to make camp so we left them but Jon did ask if we could send out a message over his new HF radio to send help for them...they declined and we proceeded on through Mengal Pass. For those that went on my last organized DV trip and know how easy the trail run was and 2wd with AT tires was fine. In this case it was NOT. Stay out of Goler and Mengal with 2wd or you will more than likely get stuck. Not to say some extremely experienced skillful driving and rock stacking could get you through but you could be stuck in there for hours trying to get over obstacles assuming you don't break anything.
Anyway, we headed off to the Cabins back there. It was getting dark so we skipped over several of the smaller side trails including Barker Ranch. We went to the Geologists cabin to find it occupied by someone who wasn't very friendly. That turned out to be a good thing though. We proceeded back to Russels Camp and stayed there. We made camp around 9 or 10pm and so we didn't go up and explore the cabin until morning. Wish we had...there is running water, a shower, and a pit toilet even. The cabins back in that area are pretty well maintained. I still would sleep in the vehicle to avoid any critters at night though. Anyway, Russels Camp would make for a good place a larger group to camp and there was plenty of room for trucks.
We explored Butte Valley a bit the next day. Butte Valley is really pretty and accessible with a 2wd vehicle and AT tires (some careful driving is required) via the east side. I would recommend bringing someone with a 4x4 unless you are experienced, though when dry shouldn't pose any serious issues. Anyway, there are a bunch of trails all back in that area to be explored. From there we made a few stops at more camps on the trail out to the main road. From where you hit pavement it is only 20 or so miles into BadWater. Since Jon hadn't been there, we had to make the stop. It turned out to be a good thing we did too. Jon contacted someone on HF at the lowest point in North America. I am fairly certain that made the contact on the other end very happy.
We filled up again (gas is CHEAP in DV) and went into Galena Canyon to explore some older Pfizer talc mining operations. We camped in the area for the night. Aside from it being ridiculously windy, there was some interesting mining stuff in the area. We headed out and aired up on pavement on Sunday. My original plan was to check out Trona Pinnacles as I have never stopped there and figured based on time we could do that. Instead on the way out through Wildrose Canyon we explored Skidoo and the area around there. We also stopped at the Charcoal Kilns in Wildrose. The road to the NPS campsite is still locked so we couldn't explore any further. We stopped for a quick bite in Ridgecrest and headed home.
A couple of photos from the pre-PRErun:
The entire thread with tracks and LOTS of photos is located at: http://www.toyota120.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20535
We have a dedicated COMS Section on our board and our official T120 trail frequencies. The OAUSA group has been doing this for a while but now we are trying to do the same, provide Technician testing during the evening at camp. Now the push to get my General and VE. Don't know when I will have the time to do this but eventually, we will have enough of the appropriate Extra/Gen and VE to provide ham licensing directly to people in our trail runs.
The original November Thread can be found here (5 pages with lots of photos): http://www.toyota120.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19087
NOTE: The copyright of all the above the photos is owned by me [Schuyler Smith-KJ6NAT] and used on the K9STU.com site with permission.
