Old Woman Benchmark

Barstow BLM

Click for map.

I came up the road first to see how far I can get on it and second to grab the benchmark on the hill. I decided that if I'm going to beat up the car, I should only do it once and turned back. This is just a little hill, but the contours look very tight on the map indicating a very steep terrain. To the point I stopped for the hill, the road is fine even for little cars although there are some deteriorating parts. After this, it hits a wash and becomes full of medium rocks. I seem to have stopped in front of a couple prospects. They're a smaller version of the larger mine workings around the place. Those larger ones have foundations and a few other artifacts surrounded by audits and holes. These are just little holes with some tailings. Meanwhile, the hill looks very doable. At second glance, those contours are actually 20 foot contours instead of the usual 40 foot. Not so much up between each, so not so difficult.

The Old Woman benchmark is up at the top of that little hill. I'm planning on going up the seam between the two, then take the ridge.

The bigger mines between here and San Bernardino National Forest have nothing on that mass of tailings just inside the forest boundary. The lighter color is all from a huge mine.

Out north, there are more little and medium hills to conquer. There's a few marked on Peakbagger out there.

The cactus aren't bad here, but I've already managed to kick one pencil cholla and embed a thorn in the knuckle of a toe while poking around mine workings. Had to take my shoe and sock off and then the thing wouldn't even budge until I got the toe bent just right. Those things are sneaky. Many of them are tiny and easy to miss. Well, with my eyes. Less so with my foot. So I watch carefully as I go up the increasingly steep slope.

To the east, more hills coming off the higher mountains to the south. I'm trying to locate a small pass where a road goes over there, but I'm not sure enough about the area for that.

More care is needed in finding solid foot placement on the hill than in avoiding cactus. It's not too bad. There even seems to be a trail forming along the route.

New view from the saddle includes the wide Silver Peak.

Also the rest of the hills that are grouped near this one. There's roads all around them to serve more prospects and maybe a mine or two.

The going up from the saddle along the ridge is not so easy. It has some huge slabs. I follow the trail, of sorts, along the east side where it is steep, but all the steps are step sized. With a few adjustments of path, this gets me to the top where there is a small cairn beside the reference mark and a lot of surveyor trash. Three or four groups must have been up here putting up a stand over the years.

Reference 1 is easy to find at the very top of the hill among the silver specked rocks.

Plenty of surveyor trash to be sure that this is a surveyed point. (The distance is the west view.)

Now the closer mine to the south is visible. It has a lot of tailings, but nothing like that one at the end of the road. Granite Peaks to the left of the mine is my ultimate goal for stopping here.

The station is in a small depression and the stamping is partly rubbed off from all the use.

So that's it. Benchmark "collected". I can't find the other reference although the first is numbered so the second must have existed once. I also don't have the data sheet, so no idea if it has an azimuth or where to find it. Still, I think I'll look on the other bump at least. I head down a little west of the big rocks on the ridge and this is an easier route than the one I used to come up. The other bump is a larger, flatter bump with lots of good spots to put an azimuth, but none of the ones I have a look at were used.

My path down, a little. It gets steeper quickly, but it's very short.

The barrel cactus is seeming rare in the area and hangs out in a spot that stays shady.

Looking back from here, it is easy to select the west side to go up.

I ponder what other bumps might have an azimuth, but decide against actually looking. So often the description just lists off some other benchmark to be used as azimuth and other times when there is one, it's just at some seemingly random location near a road. Without knowing where I should look, it's a matter of getting lucky. I make my way down to the west for that little bit of a different route. It is steep and is certainly not developing a trail. I pass some prospects, but even these do not seem to have trail.

Prospects everywhere. The prospects look somewhat recent in that they are well defined holes that haven't had much little rock fall to fill them.

Coming down on the west side, I'm surrounded by the little hills. A road swings around between the one with the benchmark and the next one north.

Once down, I walk out along the road and cut some of it going across the desert. It looks like someone mined with a bulldozer down here. The area is now a shooting range, of course. No one is out today, but there will be a couple in the general area over the weekend.

The absolute randomness of what people will do to the desert. Behind are those Granite Peaks. The west peak on the right and the east, higher peak on the left.

Meanwhile, the light does magic things with its randomness in the desert.

©2019,2020 Valerie Norton
Written 22 Jan 2020