Three Prune Camp supposedly got it’s name from an early Mountaineers party that camped there with their provisions reduced to 3 prunes. The camp is along a ridge between the North Fork Quinault and the Queets valleys in Olympic National Park. It was seldom visited, but is an excellent camp along the Skyline Trail, which provides dramatic views of the central Olympics from the south. There are more hikers up there these days, but it is still a remote area, a long ways from a trailhead.
If you click on the image to enlarge it, the road to Whitney Portal becomes much more prominent as the scar across the hillside to the right side of the image. Whitney Portal is one of the access points for climbers heading up Mt Whitney is the highest mountain in the lower 48 with an elevation of 14,505 ft (4421 m). It is in California just to the west of Death Valley National Park and less than 100 miles from the lowest point in North America.
According to some historians, the Pi Ute [Paiute] Indians called Mt. Whitney Too-man-i-goo-yah, which means ‘the very old man.’
The miners in the White Mountains around the turn of the 20th Century cut down these bristlecones that were hundreds of years old … or more. They used them for mine timbers and to build cabins for the few months of the year they could live at 10,000 feet. A complete travesty. Thoughtless carnage in the pursuit of a hopeless dream. We can just be happy that there was no large seam of high quality ore. If that had happened, the bristlecones would likely have all been logged.
Not a lot to say about this, except that this is a great friend of mine and we were in the Death Valley area and saw this old wrecked truck. We both like taking photos of things that are old and falling apart. Maybe it’s that we can identify!
Along the Alaska Highway there is a small community with an amazing collection of signs. I think I understand part of why local road departments are short funded… but it is an interesting collection.