| SMITH MTN POTOSI MTN PRIVATE TRIP. 12/2-3/89. & THE DPS GUIDE ED | LUBIN |
Paul and Ruth Bloland and seven potential DPS members from a Sierra Club evening hike I lead-Don, Melissa and Trevor Macri: Hal Rice; Tim Brazell: Anne Marie Schober and Allen Frankel--joined me on the trip: mountaineering was a new experience for Melissa. Trevor and Allen.
Smith Min., on the east rim of Death Valley is ordinarily done with nearby Brown Peak, car camping off the Greenwater Valley Road. But Brown is also done with Eagle Mtn. #2; so we decided to do Smith with not-easy-to-combine Potosi Mtn. In Nevada, about 32 road miles, 23 air miles, SW of downtown Las Vegas. This added about 110 miles to our trip but there were at least two advantages. After Smith we were able to stop at Tecopa Hot Springs which is State owned and free, for a shower and refreshing dip: then, driving via highway 178, dine at a casino restaurant in Pahrump. These two stops also broke the drive to Potosi into three reasonably short segments.
Trip highlights included: fine weather with mild daytime temperatures: nights down to freezing climbing two peaks with contrasting desert scenery finding pseudo fossils while climbing Smith and excellent view of Death Valley from its summit: the hot springs: seeing how three fully grown persons (the Macri family) and their 70-pound boxer could cram into and sleep in the back of my Cherokee: arising in the AM at Potosi to find, besides litter and dung. two tepees nearby, and around thirty people--men. women and children--walking about, many In buckskins, some men carrying muzzle loading rifles. This was no dream. They were a group of palefaces interested in recapturing a period of early Americana. Mark-Mark, one of the powwow leaders, approached and Informed me our vehicles (three Cherokees and a Blazer) were in their target practice area. We were moving anyway. He also said that it was illegal for us to have camped next to a spring. Unwittingly, we were at a tiny water trough pipe-fed by the spring. The wild burros indignantly braying during the night, almost in camp, should have alerted us we were doing something wrong.
We failed to reach the summit of Potosi, thanks to an unplanned 10:30 a.m. start. Using the DPS Guide, Route A, we hiked for31/2 hours toward the peak and got within one mile (about 1/8 mile before the junction of Route B). It would have been necessary to return in the dark had we continued on, and the danger of becoming lost or Injured due to the terrain, would have been beyond safe limits.
On our way home, some of us stopped for dinner at Whiskey Pete's in Stateline. A few had the $3.95 prime rib dinner special. which was good. Playing "nickel-one-arm bandits," Don and Melissa won more than enough to pay for their meals, and Hal, his by playing blackjack. As an attraction, the casino has Bonnie and Clyde's bullet-riddled car on display and, by our encounter with the Group at Potosi. I was reminded it was only a moment in time between when the Indians and Bonnie and Clyde roamed the Great Plains. Paul did his usual good job of leading the climbs and, even without bagging Potosi, the trip was enjoyable.
