Telescope Peak
Telescope Peak, located in Death Valley National Park, offers one the largest vertical drops in the conterminous United States. Within a few miles the elevation drops from eleven thousand forty nine feet to two hundred and eighty two feet below sea level (11,331 feet). This is greater than the drop from Mt Whitney to Lone Pine (10,794 feet) on the eastern escarpment of the California Sierra Nevada or the drop from Pikes Peak to Colorado Springs (8,102 feet) on the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. When Death Valley hit its recorded high temperature of 134 degrees (F) in 1913 the summit of Telescope should have been a relatively cool 99 degrees (F). Every year it snows in Death Valley National Park, Telescope always gets an accumulation of snow during the winter.
Telescope is best climbed from the Panamint Valley side because of a dirt road up Wild Rose Canyon to Mahogany Flats which is at eight thousand one hundred thirty three feet. Even starting at this altitude it is still a seven mile hike to the summit. Most people do the round trip in about eight hours, 5 hours up and 3 hours down. I know one person who claims to have reached the summit in two hours and twenty five minutes as well as knowing a woman who took twelve hours for the round trip. Wild Rose is easiest reached from Ridgecrest through Trona on SR 178. If the gates are closed at the charcoal kilns due to ice & snow it adds a couple miles to the trek. There is a campground above the kilns at Mahogany Flats, which is the trailhead. There is a road above the campground, which continues up to Rogers Peak. There is an electronics communication relay station there. The gate is always closed on this road but it makes an alternate route to the where the trail comes up near the electronic station. The road is on the west side where the trail is on the east side of the ridge. The trail affords a panoramic view of Death Valley and Bad Water, which the road doesn’t provide until you reach Rogers Peak. The ridge you follow to the summit is impressive in that within a couple miles of either side of it the elevation drops eight to ten thousand feet. The east side is Death Valley and the west side is Panamint Valley which is about one thousand feet above sea level..
The route from Mahogany Flats to the summit is an easily followed trail unless there is snow at which time the general route is still obvious. It is a long hike but only gets appreciably steep near the summit itself. After Rogers Peak there is a view of both Death Valley and the more distant Sierra Nevada. The Sierra is at its best when it still has a lot of snow on them, so the best time to climb Telescope is in early spring when most the snow is off the mountain but still deep in the Sierra. Also the gate at the kilns should be open at that time. Two of my times on Telescope came around my Birthday in the beginning of March. I would spend a night in Beatty on the Nevada side of Death Valley ( the small town has 3 casinos and a brothel ) then cross back into California and meet Mike for an attempt at the mountain. Both times the snow proved to be too deep to make the long way to the summit. One March we hiked up to Mahogany Flats and set up a camp in the snow to shorten the hike. It dumped additional snow on us overnight and our failed attempt included snowshoes. (14 miles is just to far to snowshoe on a day hike, even though we only went a mile if that). The other March attempt we made it to the ridge near Rodger's Peak but decided the snow would slow us down to where the summit was highly improbable. We brought golf clubs and hit a couple balls but none where as spectacular as the one I had hit off the summit the year before. We came back down the road side but cut the two large switchbacks by sliding down the snow and self arresting with our ice axes.
Of the five times I’ve tried for the summit I’ve made it twice, both times starting from Mahogany Flats. I’ve started from the flats, made the summit, came back, packed up camp and hiked down to the kilns (about 17 miles total). Twice from the flats I was stopped by snow and the other failed time was from the kilns. The first time Mike, Randy and I tried it was from the kilns. I talked them into taking a short cut off the road and up the side of the ridge through the trees. Somehow my short cuts are never short cuts, but at least they are always un- forgettable. (actually they must be forgettable or nobody would ever take another one with me) By the time we flushed out a few deer and finally made it to the road near Rogers Peak I was about done. I wandered over and checked out the electronics shack while Randy and Mike pushed ahead. Back then a generator powered the electronics, now they are on solar power. Randy faded somewhere along the way and Mike was the only one to make the summit that day.
In March of 2000 we decided to try Telescope from the south instead of the north. Mike and I hiked up Surprise Canyon to Panamint City but didn't even come close to the summit. Above abandoned Panamint City we tried to hike up Water Canyon but after hours of bushwhacking we turned back having had made little progress. In May of 2002 the wife and I took a five hour hike up the trail around Rodger's Peak and back down the road. The road is steep downhill all the way with no leveling which wasn't good on her bad knees. It took almost two slow hours to come down the road.