Hawk's Aerie

The Location:

Imagine being 32 miles from the nearest paved road, and about 40 miles from the closest place to get food, water, and gas. The first 22 miles is on a graded gravel that could be driven by a passenger car. The next 6 miles were a rocky & bumpy road that requires high clearance, the next 3.9 require 4-wheel drive and the last 0.1 mile requires driving over weeds approximately 6-7 feet high in the marsh that is now in the middle of the jeep trail. Imagine, too, that there is a dry wash that you can take as a foot trail next to the marsh, that is not drivable.

BF & I were in the back end of Johnson Canyon, in Death Valley National Park, having camped there Monday night to facilitate hiking the last 1.5-2 miles to Hungry Bill's ranch in the middle of the desert. There were obvious signs that a horse-group had been there that weekend; otherwise the closest human was probably about 30-40 miles away. We went and hiked the trail to Hungary Bill's in the morning; despite being told it was hard to find, neither of us found it difficult. This was partially due to the fact that the horse group left horse shit all over the trail; partially due to them having obviously trimmed some of the trees back, and partially because we know how to read trail signs.

The Scenario:
After our hike, we decided to eat lunch at our camp before driving back to Golden Canyon for a hike.[1] I had commented to BF on the hike that I was enjoying the no-human contact, and hoping that we wouldn't see anyone until we got back to the West Side Road. Alas, that was not to be. As we were eating lunch, I heard human voices. About 5 minutes later, we finally saw a couple backpacking up to where we were. They looked at our car in shock, and asked how we had managed to get it up there. BF refrained from commenting that it was easy if you had a Jeep, and just stated that if you know how to off-road it's not hard. After offering them some water, we discussed the trail (How hard is it? Oh, not hard if you can read trail signs. Can either of you read trail signs? He can!) & they went up the trail.

My comment to BF was that I didn't think it would go well for them, as he took them up the trail that lead through the marsh rather than the obvious trail through the dry wash. We took back off down the trail and found his car 3 miles back. The twit had a Jeep! It was a newer version than BF's (his was a Commander), and still shiny new, but... damn. We're guessing that he was just a pussy about driving his nice FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE car off-roading.

Some people should not be allowed to own 4-wheel drive.

Or be in the backcountry.

[1]Which we skipped to go hiking to what we think was Manly Beacon instead. But that's neither here nor there.