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In October of 1998 we decided to travel down to Death Valley for the 49th annual Death Valley 49'ers encampment. While we were there we decided to see how far we could travel up the 'North Fork' of Echo Canyon. We'd read about it in the guide books, seen it on the map and even watched a QuickTime video of it on Roger Brown's Website. The trail starts about 3/4 of a mile before the Inyo Mine. It looks just like any other mild Death Valley 4x4 trail, but then you come across the first obstacle.
The dry fall is now about 20ft long at a 30+ degree angle. This is obviously the realm of short wheelbase vehicles, but hey!, wait a moment, we're driving full-size F-Series. So obviously we turn around and head back down - NOT! We were too busy spotting my F250 up the rock to take any pictures, but here's the view up the fall just as Susan levels out. You can get some impression at the size of the rocks by looking at Susan's tires. They're 31.5 inch (265/75R17) BFG ATs.
The next obstacle is a continuation of the fall above. It looks like a simple rock step, but it's much more of a problem that the larger dry fall. The problem with this part was the heavy trucks just kept spitting the rocks out from under their wheels. Anyway, after about half an hour of rock stacking, we (I'd) managed to build a solid enough base that stayed put. Here's yours truly hamming it up after we'd got both trucks through.
Click here to continue up to the Echo town site and the final dry waterfall.
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