October 27-30, 1993 - Steve Smith
It was with anticipation that a group of six BLM volunteers from Friends of the Inyo WSA and Desert Survivors joined with me for a descent of Hunter canyon. After all, this would be an end of an era for us - our final exploration of all eight major eastside Inyo canyons. Since 1989, the other seven unexplored canyons (Daisy, Craig, Beveridge, Keynot, McElvoy, Pat Keyes, Cougar) had been descended during BLM volunteer wilderness study area inventories and only Hunter remained. For this exploratory, I was joined by Morgan Irby (a stalwart veteran of all eight canyon descents), Wendell Moyer, Tom Budlong, Marc Smith, Matt Webb, and Brian Webb.
The upper half of Hunter canyon had been evaluated several times during previous trips since it is easily accessible on an old bulldozer road. The long abandoned dozer road leaves the Enyo crest near the Burgess mine at 9,400' and follows the bottom of Hunter canyon down to within 1/4-mile of the Bighorn spring at 5,200'. I have heard that this road was built in the early 1960's to provide better access to the isolated Bighorn mine at 6,700' on the Hunter ridgeline. A register at roads end showed that a few 4-wd groups had made it to the end as recently as 1991. The few notations described the difficult winching it took to drive the steep, loose road.
We
started our backpack from roads end at the mouth of Hunter Canyon in Saline
Valley. As usual for our initial canyon recono~descents, we had plenty of rope
and anchors for the waterfalls we were sure we would encounter. A fairly good
trail starts from 1,780' as shown on the Craig and New York Butte 7-1/2 maps
and winds up along the south side of Hunter Canyon before dropping down to
Bighorn spring. This is one of the few Inyo trail segments which is shown on
the new 7-1/2 maps. Unfortunately, the trail has to climb an extra 1,600' to
6,800' to bypass a cliff face before dropping down to Bighorn spring at
5,200'.Like most Inyo trails, this trail was constructed for burros carrying heavy loads up to mines and mill sites so does not exceed a l5% grade which is great for backpacking. This is the southern end of our 40 mile Lonesome Miner trail which extends all the way north to Pat Keyes Pais and down to roads end at Reward. At several points along the trail we had good views down into the bottom of Hunter canyon and could see plenty of thick brush and obvious flowing waterfalls.
Our first day was short and we camped at a beautiful location at 4,060' in an area of historic mining. The miners have three wooden tent platforms built on a ledge overlooking Saline Valley. What a great campsite - with numerous mining artifacts and even