Jackass Canyon

8/4/06

Now here's a scary place... We drove down the east side of the sierra, across Owens valley and up into the Sweetwater mountains. Started up the jackass canyon rd, notice a "road closed" sign lying down at the start but figured that since it wasn't standing up it must mean the road is open... 1/4 mile later we crossed the arroyo in the canyon bottom and discovered why the road had been closed, a huge flash flood had swept thru, recent, the mud was still wet... The road had been regraded, we could still see the bulldozer tracks, Must have been 2 or 3 days ago... We kept going up, figured we could always turn around... Did I mention the massive thunderheads that where gathering in sky above us? The road such as it was kept going up the canyon, crossing the arroyo every 1/2 mile or so, we could see where the flood had scoured a 15 ft deep slot in the old arroyo bed... Came up to an old mine and the reason for the flood... An enormous fire had wiped out the whole valley, burnt to the ground, turned the stumps to charcoal and left white disks of ash where the trees had been. Must have only been a week or two ago, now with no vegetation the rain had just roared down the slopes like a lahar flow... OK. I am scared of fire and flash floods. Both in a week is really bad. Did I mention the thunderheads? We crossed into the next valley and it was a different world. Green, calm little creek, lovely. Found a place to camp near jackass creek, we set up camp and started to talk about the creek, how high it was and what we should do if it really started to rise. We decided to move camp, scouted out a place a few hundred yards up the canyon that was 20 ft above the creek, packed up the bus and moved. We looked around, saw more thunderheads in the little bit of the sky we could see from the canyon floor and decided to just pack up and head to Vegas! Way too scary.