The Expeditions:

Trip Report
July 15 - 17, 2005

Friday. 8a.m. Oakland, CA.
Our party climbed into two 4x4s and drove east on the 580. We passed the weapons factories at Livermore, through the windmills of the Altamont Pass, over the Delta regions of Tracy and Stockton and into the Yosemite Valley. Although our first destination was the Tonopah Test Range (a base built during the early 1980s to house the super-secret stealth fighter program), members of our party insisted on a first, and in their minds, equally awe-inspiring site: “Mono Cone.” It’s an ice-cream stand on the western bank of Mono Lake. As we waited in line for “ Tufa Tower” sundaes (Oreo-cookie ice cream with whipped cream on top), we read informational signs about Mono Lake on the side of the establishment. There are trillions of brine shrimp in Mono Lake…

As we left Lee Vining and headed towards Highway 20, disaster seemed to strike. The 1984 Suburban, which carried six people, began to sputter and lose power. We stopped on the side of the road. Not cool to break down in the middle of the desert, but the fact that we were only a few miles away from a town was good. Better here than on a dirt road in the middle of a valley. The other good news was that we had a mechanic in our party. This was lucky. We made it back to Lee Vining and the mechanic among us changed the fuel filter. The truck started running like a champ. Total cost: 50 cents. It’s great when stuff like that happens.

A few hours later, we’d done the “jumps” on the 20 (if you’ve been on this road, you know what I’m talking about), and stopped at a gas station in Tonopah before we headed out into the nowhere of Nevada’s country-sized military ranges. An hour after filling up our gas tanks, we were on our dirt-road approach to our first destination: Brainwash Butte.

We parked our trucks and made the short hike to the summit, where the 80+ hangars of the Tonopah Test Range (TTR) came into view. The TTR is huge – an entire valley filled with hangars (the contents of which are obscure), radar and radio arrays, bomb targets, and God knows what other kinds of military do-dads. Through the telescope, we saw trucks driving from the TTR to Site 4 (another obscure installation in this valley) and back. There’s a lot of activity as this place, even though the stealth fighters left for Holloman AFB in New Mexico in the early 1990s.

After dinner around the campfire, some of us went back to the summit to watch the base at night. No UFOs were spotted, but the lights at the base were most certainly on. A light rain came down on us as we descended the hill back to our camp.

Saturday
After teeth-brushing, swigs of Gatorade, and a short hike to say goodbye to the TTR, we got back on the road and drove past herds of wild horses on our way back to the highway. A short drive to Highway 375, then a turn onto the “ Extraterrestrial Highway.” We made our way past the enigmatic Base Camp, through the Railroad Valley, home of a crashed CIA spy-drone, over the plutonium-soaked Queen City Summit, and into the hamlet of Rachel for lunch at the Little A’Le’Inn. A warm lunch is a good thing.

By mid-afternoon, we were on our next dirt road, driving towards Badger Springs and the base of Tikaboo Peak. Serious 4-wheel drive action ensued, each driver eager to show off there skills. I’d never driven up to the campsite here (I’d always walked), but after negotiating basketball-sized boulders and fallen trees, we found ourselves well on the way to the summit – and we hadn’t even hiked an inch. Very cool.

The Tikaboo trail is always a killer for me, but I tend to be pretty out of shape. Everyone but me scrambled up the sheets of vertical shale like they were walking around the block. I struggled to keep up. Amazingly, we didn’t even lose the trail, which was also a first for me. When we reached the summit, we’d set a new world record for the ascent time: one hour. I guess we got a little head start by driving further up the mountain, but this was another first. Almost unbelievable, as far as I was concerned.

As the sun began to set, we opened a bottle of Jameson’s and took swigs. The view from Tikaboo is overwhelming, even if there weren’t an “above top secret” city in the distance. The peak got darker, and the lights at Area 51 began to shine in the distance. We talked about philosophy, watched satellites and meteors streak across the sky, and alternated between watching Area 51 and the planet Jupiter through the telescope.

It was grand.