Dispatch #37 - The Trona Pinnacles

Remembering the life altering trip with my kids that started this whole obsession with BLM lands. And, of course, the tufas.

This month marks the 11th anniversary of a random January camping trip I took in 2015 — one that would eventually rearrange the trajectory of my life.

I owe it all to some tufa spires.

In the months before this trip, my family had been hunkering down, waiting for the birth of our daughter in late November, then settling into her new life amid visits from family. The week before this trip, my older two kids and I had all been sick. From a blog entry I posted on 12/24/14.

It is 64 degrees on Christmas Eve and the sun is on its way down, hoping to clear the horizon before the dinner rush.

My five-year-old daughter has an ear infection, my two-year-old son has a fever and I’m doped up on just enough NyQuil to simultaneously make myself feel better and allow me to take care of the older kids while Kari and the baby hole up in our bedroom.

By the time the new year rolled around, my older kids and I were ready for a road trip and open skies. When all the campsites I knew about were already fully booked, I reached out to a friend who suggested we camp on some “BLM land.”

This was the very first time I had ever heard of the term.

I’m not sure which rabbit hole I fell into on the antiquated BLM website that led me to the Trona Pinnacles, but of all the tunnels I could have crawled into while looking for a place to camp, I’m sure glad it delivered us to those ethereal tufas.

We left Los Angeles on New Year’s Day, 2015 — my kids in car seats, my wife at home with our newborn. I remember thinking that no matter how this impromptu camping trip turned out, or what the Pinnacles looked like, we were going to have some kind of adventure. And that seemed to matter as much as anything.

Four hours later we arrived to the gravel entrance off Highway 178. We stretched, ran around, read the welcome signs, and then hopped back in our Element for the final six mile drive that would take us to the heart of the landscape.

The memory that lingers most vividly is the raucous laughter that ensued when I let my daughter ride shotgun without a seatbelt and let my son sit in my lap as we drove along the sandy road. We cranked up the music, probably Florence and the Machine, and whooped and hollered as we rolled and bumped and fishtailed our way through the Mojave. I remember the totality of joy written on their faces, like we had all just broken free of fevers and ear infections.

We spent the days hiking around the tufa spires, what my daughter affectionately called “drip sand castles” - bouncing on the surrounding salt flats, and spending a lot of time roaming and climbing among the abandoned train cars that dot the landscape.

The trip was akin to love at first sight.

When we got home, I immediately bought a 3x5 notebook and a stack of books about public lands. I started filling it with facts, quotes, and questions — trying to understand what these wild, quiet BLM lands were and why they mattered.

I posted a handful of photos from that trip on my personal Instagram, images that now live among the lost photographs from 2014 to 2018 that still haunt me (and why screenshots will have to suffice). I took them with my trusty Canon G10, which - HOLY HELL - I only just realized came out the same season (fall 2008) as the Canon 5D Mark II I currently shoot with.

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A family camping trip to Trona in April 2020 (my son still obsessed with the trains).

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The Trona Pinnacles

That first trip was personal and electric, but it would take time for me to understand that I was standing on the exposed floor of an ancient lake.

To roam among the pinnacles is to encounter the geological memory of that lake, one that once filled this corner of the California desert. The formations are tufa, a porous form of calcium carbonate that precipitates out of water. They are not carved by wind, but built slowly, molecule by molecule, beneath the surface of an inland sea. Between roughly 10,000 and 100,000 years ago, this basin held Lake Searles, a deep Pleistocene lake fed by runoff from the Sierra Nevada during wetter climatic periods. When the climate warmed and the water receded, the chemistry of that lake was left behind, hardened into spires.

Some read as towers or tombstones, others as ridges or cones, each shape a variation on the same long conversation between water and stone. Standing among them is to feel the invitation of geologic time.

In late March of 2021, my traveling partner and I watched one of the most spectacular sunsets and moonrises we have ever encountered. As the light shifted, the 500 tufas rising from the dry lakebed took on the oranges, purples, and pinks of the sky.

My friend Josiah made a beautiful 1-min film at Trona…

Moonrise, March 2021

Getting There

Access is via Pinnacle Road off Highway 178, about twenty-three miles east of Ridgecrest, California, where a gravel entrance leads into the heart of the formations. I’ve driven this road in multiple seasons and have never had an issue with a high-clearance, two-wheel-drive vehicle. That said, conditions are highly dependent on weather and season, so it’s always wise to check in with the Ridgecrest BLM Field Office if you have questions (760-384-5400).

There is a single pit toilet near the main area, but no water or trash service, so plan to haul out every last thing you bring in.

Dispersed camping is free anywhere you can find a suitable place to park your vehicle or pitch a tent, ideally in areas that have already been used. November through April are the best months to visit, when daytime temperatures are mild and the desert light stretches low across the valley.

Hopefully you’ll get the best moonrise of your life.

Signing off until next Sunday.

Josh

PS: A little sunrise time lapse I made in Trona one morning.