Day 6 – Eureka Springs Dry Camp to Lone Pine
Wednesday Dec 29th, 2021
Eureka Dunes Dry Camp – Dedeckera Canyon (6 mi – 15 mins)
Dedeckera Canyon – Marble Bath (8 mi – 25 mins)
Marble Bath – Steel Pass (2 mi – 6 mins)
Steel Pass – Upper Warm Springs (11.3 mi – 35 mins)
Upper Warm Springs – Saline Valley (Middle) Warm Springs (2.1 mi – 13 mins)
Saline Valley (Middle) Warm Springs – Lower Warm Spring (0.6 mi – 4 mins) Lunch
Lower Warm Spring – Lone Pine (88 mi – 3.6 hrs)
Quality Inn Lone Pine
1920 S Main St
Lone Pine, CA 93545
760-264-4090
Our last day in the park, we took our time getting going, Mandi & Kahleesi walked to the top of the sand dunes for a couple photos. While I broke down the tent and got things ready for breakfast. Then we chatted with our friends we’d met the day before from Portland, had some breakfast and started on our way. First stop/challenge Dedecker Canyon. Now we had seen some folks’ videos, but as everybody knows nothing stays the same and we had a couple of technical sections but had no problems.
Next Up was Steele Pass, we wondered if we’d have any trouble with weather as it had snowed in the upper elevation but we sailed through only finding traces of new snow occasionally. We looked everywhere for the Marble Bath finally giving up and pressing on to the springs.
Now here’s an oddity, next up was Upper, Middle, & Lower Warm Springs… No wonder I couldn’t recall the cabin on the first day I thought they were over here at a similarly named place(s). We had visions of a hot dip, but apparently everyone and their cousin sneaks out here to ogle at nudist enjoying a soak. We took the time to walk up to one “bath” where a lone guy with a robe on sat. He says jump on in the water’s nice. A little too weird for us so we pushed on, me still hoping for a shot at visiting Cerro Gordo, but knowing we had weather crossing our path, we waisted no time until we hit the God forsaken Saline Valley Road…
Oh joy, we only had some 12 extra miles of washboard hell before taking on that southern pass again and snow was for cast. After what seemed like forever we hit the pass with snow falling steadily. One good thing I told Mandi, we should have to worry about oncoming traffic with the roads getting slick. It was really throwing down white everywhere and 5 mins later some guy in an F-150 comes sliding around the corner on street tires.. I got him stopped and let him know he had a good 3 hours drive to get to his beloved springs and in this weather he had better turn around and go another day, which he obliged, following us out about 10 miles before we left him pass as the snow was getting lighter. We sailed out and aired up at the highway before rolling through Keeler for our last time nearing 7:30 pm as we rolled into Lone Pine and found a hotel right off the highway, it was snowing once again, and Mandi’s Jeep was acting up – electrical gremlins, turned out the hellish jarring from the washboard had loosened her ground cable to the battery. We got our room and ran back up to the place we had eaten the day before and then back to the motel, for a nights rest and Alabama Hills in the morning!
