Trail Quest At Ridgecrest

After resting at the Carriage Inn, we checked out the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest before hitting the trails the next day.

Human and natural history come to life inside the Maturango Museum. Where else can you see a sidewinder missile and a mountain lion on display? This is also a great place to buy maps and guidebooks about the area.

Artifacts line the grounds at the Maturango. This looks like a dummy rear axle in a tandem axle configuration. We also saw a tram bucket from the Saline Valley Salt Tram.

El Paso route EP 26 snakes its way along the border of the El Paso Mountains Wilderness, and passes by Sheep Spring, Colorado Camp, and Gerbracht Camp.

The trail surface beckoned us to go faster, but held embedded baby-head rocks that threatened us with damage if we did.

Anytime you see tall trees in the desert, it’s a good bet there’s reliable water nearby. This is Sheep Spring. We didn’t see any running water in the adjacent streambed, but there was plenty of green grass growing nonetheless. Our guidebook told us there were petroglyphs to be found in the streambed’s rocks, but we didn’t look hard enough. The other 4Runner in this photo was probably driven by hikers. The El Paso Mountains Wilderness is on the other side of the streambed.

Don’t get complacent on EP 26...

...It’s not a rock-crawling trail, and it’s not a high-speed trail....

...Enjoy the scenery and slow down for the “gotchas.”

A chimney and some foundations are all that greets you at Colorado Camp. It’s right next to the trail and marked by a sign.

If you thought Colorado Camp was sparse you need to check out Gerbracht Camp, where you’ll see a slab with protruding rebar and not much else. Mining life was tough in the El Paso Mountains.

The sun set on the day and on our adventure. Gerbracht Camp is right next to EP 100, so we jumped on that trail and dropped directly down to the pavement at Garlock Road.