Our last day in Death Valley, before heading off to other desert destinations: What else to do but another canyon scramble?
This day's destination was the short drainage of Twenty Mule Team Canyon. Why the funny name? Historically, large teams of twenty mules were used to haul each wagon full of borax from the mines in Death Valley. The rocks in this canyon are chock full of borate minerals, so they named it for the mule teams, even though said mule teams were never used in this particular canyon. By the time it was prospected, most of the borax mining activity had moved to deposits to the southwest of Death Valley, near the town of Boron.
Incidentally, I just found out that one of Chad's grandfathers had apparently been a mule skinner, back in the day. Interesting bit of old family trivia.
We parked in the widest spot we could find in the narrow one-way road near the drainage, after passing some confused people going the wrong way down the road because they got freaked out by one short steep pitch up ahead. (It wasn't that bad, but some drivers are skittish...) The flat spot on the left side of the road where we parked was apparently the site of the Monte Blanco assay office during the mining days. That building has since been moved down to Furnace Creek and now houses the Borax Museum, which we did not visit due to wanting to avoid interior spaces at this particular point in time.
Monte Blanco = white mountain, from all the borate minerals. The camera had a hard time for the first few pictures because it was in the wrong setting, and the rocks were just so white. It does give a sense of how bright it seemed that morning, however.
We headed up the wide wash, as our book instructed. No one else was stopping here, so we had it to ourselves :)
Soon, we started to find old prospects, the canyon narrowed,
and became quite fun to clamber in. I love this kind of hike!
The views of the badlands below were particularly good further up the canyon,
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