Cabin Springs

Cabin Spring is the last turnoff on the road from Corn Creek to Alamo. You have to pass the other turn offs and go over Sheep Pass to get there. Then you drive around the East Desert Range and cross a valley to get to Cabin Spring. Once we got there we found neither a cabin nor a spring.

When we signed in at the Corn Creek Visitor Center we found that the bird watchers were making a big furor about a nesting rosy grosbeak. Since we have seen them at urban Las Vegas bird feeders we were not sure what all the furor was about, so we continued on. We have explored most of the side roads leading off from the Alamo Road and the Emigrant Pass Road, but had just realized that the Cabin Spring road remains for us. It turned out to be one of the more interesting side roads to explore. The others of interest are Hidden Forest/Dead Man Canyon and Joe May Canyon on the west side and Pine Nut Road on the south side.

The drive up to the Cabin Spring turnoff was uneventful. The current drought was very noticeable. There were no grasses growing below much of anywhere that we went. There were no annuals growing and the perennials looked in poor shape. The creosote will not bloom this year and only the yuccas and joshua trees looked healthy at all. The only blooming plants were the Mountain Mahogany (Cercocarpus intricatus) and the Grizzly Bear Prickly Pear or Old Man Cactus (Optunia erinacea var erinacea). The Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) was also making a feeble attempt at blooming. Otherwise, the wildflower year was a dud.

The turnoff to Cabin Spring takes you across a basin between two ranges, from the East Desert Range to the Sheep Range. The crossing is relatively flat until you come to the actual wash. The road is washboard, but not bad. There is a small ridge, about two feet tall, at the wash. Going up it is easy; it is primarily sandy soil, so you basically grade yourself a path up the road. From the wash the road climbs steadily uphill, as does the sheep range. None of the road is bad until it ends. We got stuck in the winter only because of the snow. We rapidly passed the point where we got stuck, rising above the creosote plain to the blackbrush (yes, it is black and it looks even blacker when it is wet) to the mountain mahogany and the pinyon and juniper forest. The road ends in the pinyon and juniper. We parked and looked for shade to picnic under. Even though the temperature at 6,500 feet was pleasant, in the 70's or low 80's, we saw no need to try to dehydrate ourselves. we could do that easily when we started scrambling around.

We ate under a juniper while we scouted the area out. We spent a lot of time looking to the west. Dead Horse Ridge was conoluted into a multitude of sideways z's that looked like layers of a marble cake. Before us, though, the canyon at Cabin Springs had two makjor arms. Both rose quite steeply. The map shows that if we crested them the walk down the other side would be long and gradual. We decided to start up the south arm and then cross to the north arm to find our way back to the car. We found an immediate flat spot where there MAY have been a cabin oin the past, but the only sign of habitation was a campfire ring. We crossed it and continued up the south protion of the canyon until it became steep enough that going furnter would entail a major climb. While rainwater and snowmelt might have created an ephemeral stream, we saw no sighs of a spring on the souht side. We crossed scree with plenty of brush growing on it untiol we got to the north arm of the canyon. It was pretty much the same story. There are obvious streambeds, but no spring. All in all, the canyon is a nice spot to visit and and maybe camp, and provides a peasant view. It is well worht returning to and exploring further.

We returned to our car and drove out without incident other than the drop at the wash. The Pathfinder took the drop well. One of the more pleasant aspects of the trip was that we saw a total of one other vehilce after we left the visitors center. That kind of solitude is not that easy to come by in the Las Vegas area.