Inyo Mountains - Cougar Canyon Descent
November 12-14, 1993 - Steve Smith
In November, nine members of the Desert Peaks Section, Desert Survivors, Friends of the Inyo WSA and BLM joined together for our initial exploration of another eastside Inyo Canyon. Cougar is the northern most major canyon on the east side of the Inyo Range along the northern boundary of the proposed Inyo Wilderness. Located north of Pat Keyes Canyon, this was another unknown area for us with no documentation about the area, its resources or terrain.
Cougar starts from the Inyo crest at around 9,600' and drops down to Saline Valley where the canyon opens up at 2,000'. The Pat Keyes 7.5 map shows two springs and two falls in the lower half along with the typically narrow, confined canyon topography which characterizes all eight of the eastside canyons. For this, our seventh eastside canyon exploratory trip, I was joined by Gerry Goss, Jerry Boggs, Tom Budlong, Morgan Irby, Wendell Moyer, Matt Webb, Scott Eggers and Brian Webb - all veterans of one or more of our other seven eastside canyon descents we have done since 1989.
We accessed Cougar from the Pat Keyes trail at 9,400' on the Inyo Crest - about four miles north of Mt. Inyo. We started by following the Pat Keyes trail for two miles down the Pat Keyes/Cougar ridgeline as we had done last April during our descent of Pat Keyes Canyon. This time, instead of following the trail south down to Pat Keyes spring, we continued east for .5 mile to a large historic mine site. From the mine at 8,500' on the pinyon covered ridge, the views east to Saline Peak and the Last Chance Range and south along the east face of the Inyos were spectacular and colorful in the late afternoon sun.
After admiring the panoramic view for as long as possible, it was time to drop down 1,500' to reach the floor of Cougar canyon at 7,000'. Gerry Goss had previously followed the canyon bottom down to the 7,000' level in Cougar and seen the remains of a cabin so we suspected a trail existed from our mine down to the cabin. We couldn't readily find the trail so just dropped directly down the ridge side from the mine and reached the cabin site at dusk. Cougar at this point is a broad pinyon covered floor which made an exceptionally nice campsite for our first night out. There was lots of sign of Bighorn sheep throughout this area and down through the upper portion of Cougar although we were unable to spot any of the animals.
Friday morning, we explored the cabin remains and artifacts in the area. Pinyon nuts were plentiful and everyone collected lots of those. Gerry and Brian soon had the trail terminus spotted and we climbed it for several hundred feet to get an idea where it connected with the ridgeline. We all discussed a future possible trip to drop down the canyon to the trail and do a loop back up to Pat Keyes Pass. As far as we know, the cabin