This trip started the way a lot of our Death Valley trips do: a Friday night drive after work with a camp spot picked for proximity, not ambition. The Trona Pinnacles checked every box. Close enough to reach in the dark, easy to find, and scenery I'd never seen in person. This was a 3-night, 3-day trip with Gary and Brent, and the goal was to enter Pleasant Canyon near Ballarat and complete the loop exiting on the South Park Canyon side.
Gary and Brent arrived at the Pinnacles well before I did on Friday and had their pick of campsites. I rolled in late, exhausted from a traffic-filled drive, and turned in early. In the morning, we reheated some premade breakfast burritos and hit the road.
A stop at the Ballarat Trading Post is mandatory every time we pass through. Not much ever changes in Ballarat, but that's sort of the point. Pausing to take in the history, or re-take it in, adds a little more context to whatever comes next.
The first major historical site up the canyon is Clair Camp. It's a relatively large site with more structure remaining than most mines and camps I've come across in the area. The history runs deep. Gold was discovered on the ridge above Pleasant Canyon in 1893 and within a few years, a camp of 200 called Pleasant City had formed in the canyon. Ballarat was established in the valley below as a supply town. Storms, shifting fortunes, and the draw of new strikes in Nevada eventually hollowed both places out. In the 1930s, a prospector named W.D. Clair began reworking the tailings at one of the old mines, pulling about $60,000 worth of gold from rock that the original operators had tossed aside. The camp stayed in the Clair family until the 1970s. If you want the full history, Beyond Nevada Expeditions has a thorough writeup.
This trip also turned out to be the most burros I've ever seen in a single outing to Death Valley. They were everywhere. At Clair Camp, three of them were posted up in the shade of the old mill. As we pulled away, another group of four was sauntering down the road in front of us. Of course, being burros, their pace prevailed and we waited. In the end, they're after the same things we are: food, water, and shade.
Next up was the World Beater Mine. We'd stopped at the World Beater Cabin on the Thanksgiving trip in 2021 but never pushed past it to the mine itself. This time we committed. The road is rough and some of the rocks along the way were big enough to make us pause and think, but we made it through. I can see this stretch being impassable after a storm.
From Rogers Pass, we split left up what the map generously calls a "road" but was really just tire tracks climbing steeply up the ridge. The map showed something called Mormon Peak ahead that seemed worth checking out, so I took the lead while the others hung back and waited on the radio. The climb was steep and loose, but what I found at the top was worth every sketchy moment. A flat, wide spot on the ridge with views in every direction. Death Valley proper on one side, the canyon we'd just come through on the other. We set up camp for the night right there.
We spent the rest of the evening on that ridge, doing very little and appreciating all of it. Some spots just have a way of making you feel like you've got the whole valley to yourself. This was one of them.