Starbuck's Exploring

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Guy Starbuck

Guy has explored the deserts and mountains of the southwestern US for more than thirty-five years. In that time, he has found a couple of hidden and remote locations that don't see many visitors.

506 posts

Stuck on Soda Lake

Stuck on Soda Lake

Oh, so one day, way back in the beginning of 1991, when I was just a young pup, my friend Jim and I were out off-roading in the sand dunes of the Devil’s Playground area out near Baker, California. We had been roaming around the desert all weekend, but

Culverwell Mine

Culverwell Mine

Back in 2017, I had a fun time poking around this old cabin and mine out in Nevada’s Great Basin. The Culverwell was also called “History Repeats.” It shipped some gold and silver ore in 1933. The cabin appears to have been lived in as recently as the 1980s

Confidence Mine and Dugout

Confidence Mine and Dugout

Early in 2021, I hiked out to some mines in the Upper Confidence Wash of Death Valley, but I still hadn’t been to the Confidence Mine itself. I needed to fix that. The mine is one of the oldest in Death Valley, being first worked in 1895. One story

June 2021 News

June 2021 News

I couldn't get Wordpress and Patreon to play nicely together, so I've ditched them both. Since I started this site twenty-four years ago, it's undergone many changes. I used to hand-code the site myself. First, it was just in HTML, then with PHP. CSS

Confidence Wash Upper Mines

Confidence Wash Upper Mines

The Confidence Wash area of southern Death Valley has always interested me. I’m not sure why. There isn’t much out there. It is a wildly desolate and forsaken stretch of desert and can only be visited in the coldest of winter months as the rest of the time

Contact Mine

Contact Mine

Information on these gold mines is sparse. Phil Sullivan, an early pioneer of Twentynine Palms, located the Contact claims by at least 1921. He filed a homestead there in 1897. (Also see the Silver Bell Mine.) Along with Bill McHaney (see the Desert Queen Mine), Sullivan reportedly built an arrastra

Garrett’s Arch

Garrett’s Arch

This trip is a nice cross-country hike into the granitic maze that is the Wonderland of Rocks to find its best arch. Finding it will be much simpler with a map and GPS, so don't attempt the hike without either. It is easy to get lost back there.