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Please click here for Part One
A Return to St. Luke’s Folly
East of the Inyo Mountains lies the vast Saline Valley with its rich deposits of salt. Here’s how I told the story when we first visited this canyon in November 2017 -
“The valley's large salt (NaCl) deposit was noted in the 1860's but due to the isolated and rugged terrain it was not exploited until 1903, beginning with the Saline Valley Salt Company. Transport was by mule pulled wagons out the northern end of the valley. This venture only lasted two years. Salt harvesting began again in 1911 with the building of an aerial tramway 13.5 miles in length up and over the Inyo Mountains to the railroad on the north end of Owens Lake - the famous Saline Valley Aerial Tramway. The construction project wiped out the salt company's finances and the operation was leased to a newly formed Owens Valley Salt Company. This venture lasted until 1918. The costs of running the vast system always proved to negate any profits. A short attempt to revive salt mining was tried again in 1920 by the Taylor Milling Company. It lasted less than a year and the tramway fell into disrepair. Five years later a new company was formed, The Sierra Salt Company. Their idea was to transport salt out by truck via a road on the south end of Saline Valley and the company talked Inyo County into getting involved with its construction. The route was via San Lucas Canyon.”
“What an incredible folly! You may accuse me of having the benefit of hindsight, but after two years of construction putting a road here and vast amounts of effort to try to keep it in place, it was quickly abandoned in favor of building a road down Grapevine Canyon into Saline Valley and overhauling the aerial tramway. Salt was trucked out the new Grapevine Canyon route - now Saline Valley Road - until 1929 when the tramway was back in operation. The Sierra Salt Company ceased operations in 1930. It just did not pay to mine salt in Saline Valley. St. Luke's Folly was long forgotten.”
Deb & Steve expressed interest in seeing San Lucas Canyon and we were more than willing (in fact excited) to return.
The road in - a cherry stem between the Inyo Mountain Wilderness and the Death Valley Wilderness - ends in the upper reaches of San Lucas Canyon. We parked the trucks and started our long hike down from here.
The first section of San Lucas Canyon is board, open, with incredible displays of rock and the geologic story they tell.
The canyon narrows and puts on an outstanding show. This is one of our favorite canyons for rock.
It gets better and better.
At the top of the major pour over (dry waterfall) is the cut blasted out of the canyon wall to construct a shelf for a road.
A view back to the top of the pour over.
Although it’s was only eight years since we lasted visited here, the change with new rockfall and canyon floods was evident. Please take a look at our blog post linked above for more photos.
Here are views across to the talus slope that was stabilized with stacked rock and wood cribbing to make a switchback in the road.
Deb & Steve had not been in the upper canyon down to the rock shelf, but they’ve hiked in the lower canyon up to the pour over from the Saline Valley Road. So there’s only around 300 yards of San Lucas Canyon they have not traveled - 300 yards of incredibly dangerous steep unstable terrain. The Eastern Sierra Museum's website has several historical photos of San Lucas Canyon (although not labeled as such, we recognize it as San Lucas Canyon). Follow this link to the photo collection -
Saline Valley and Aerial Tramway
Near the bottom are prints 81-6 to 86-7. These are of the road that once ran in San Lucas Canyon - St. Luke’s Folly.
We snacked, told stories, and relaxed before starting our return up San Lucas Canyon.
A couple of miles from our trucks, along the side of the canyon, we came upon a down-sloping outcrop of layered rock. It was suggested we all lay head down and allow blood to return to our brains since we had the chance. We’d been doing a lot of hiking and perhaps this would revitalize our brains and keep us thinking straight.
With enough sunlight left in the day to get us out of the dark canyon, we drove back to Lee Flat and up to the Nelson Cabin. The cold winds grew in intensity. We both parked with our trucks into the wind. The wind drove us into our campers early. We did not sit out and gaze at the stars.
Since we were high on the west side of the Nelson Range, sunlight would come late the following morning. We still climbed high above camp in the morning and investigated several prospects. Here’s views down at the cabin and our camp.
We spent the day touring the Skidoo area. Deb had included the 1908 hanging of Hootch Simpson in Skidoo in her “Death in Death Valley” talk. Although we were curious about what mine shaft Hootch’s body was tossed down and if the tales of the headless ghost of Hootch still haunting Skidoo were true, we instead followed the Lady in her high wanderings and topped out on highpoints above Skidoo. We had a couple more days of exploration in this area so we settled in a dispersed campsite off of the Telephone Canyon Road.
In April 2023 our friend, the Sagebrush Reconnoiterer, sent the Lady and me on a treasure hunt.
Today we shared the hunt with Steve & Deb. We started from a safe place to park the trucks along the narrow road.
Our route was downhill.
Our first stop was the old mining camp where Deb said, “You can take home this beauty for only $49 a month!”
We were tempted but found the vehicle to be below showroom quality.
We bypassed the gorge section below the camp and reached the remains of the cable system that ran above the gorge and across to the Garibaldi Mine.
The girls, with their adventurous spirits, climbed.
Deb was particularly pleased to see an ore bucket still attached to the cable at the mine across the canyon. It is visible in the lower right in the telephoto shot below.
Down a steep gully were the remains of a tracked dozer.
Besides constructing and maintaining the steep road…..
…..we believe it was also used to pull trucks and wagons up the steep sections.
We continued the descent. The views down into Death Valley were amazing.
We reached the old wagon.
We climbed further down to the old truck.
Here's information on Louie Schwitzer and Schwitzer Cummins.
Steve and the Lady climbed up the opposite slope to reach three large items. They were canvas covered and looked like large water bladders.
After our explorations, it was time to climb back up.
We had an exciting search planned for the next day. We wished to find traces of one of the old trails between Furnace Creek on the valley floor to Harrisburg and Skidoo in the Panamint Range. The trail went west from Furnace Creek and up Blackwater Wash. Just below the spring the route split into two trails, one up what was called the “Wet Fork” and one up the “Dry Fork.” Both Steve and I had the possible route of the trails on our mapping program. We found the trails marked on the USGS 15’ topo maps from 1915. We headed east from the Aguereberry Road and headed for the low pass in the distance.
The view west, where our trucks were parked.
We climbed the ridge and the Lady found an old trail. Was this it? Was this the old “Wet Fork” trail? Our excitement was growing.
The trail was still evident over the top of the ridge.
The steep rocky descent included switchbacks. We were now convinced about our success. This was the old trail and it was still visible on the ground.
We continued down, down, down on the old trail.
Note: the green square in the upper center of the above photo is Furnace Creek.
Further down we went.
We stopped at the top of the steep drop to Blackwater Spring.
We puled out our maps, oriented ourselves, marked waypoints, and planned for future adventures here. As with the day before, all that remained was the climb to return to our trucks.
Deb is visible ascending the trail in the center of the above photo.
The big surprise was that we found recent boot tracks on this old trail. We later learned that three NPS employees had found and hiked this section of trail two weeks before.
The incredible view north from the top of the ridge highpoint.
With our success, we all slept well that night. The next morning, after a hardy round of hugs, we said goodbye to our friends.
Our adventure was not over. Please click here for the final Part Three.
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