A Night on
the Fourteen

• the 405 → the 5 → the 14 · ~93 mi, ~1h55 free-flow from the Westside
• allow 2h15 on a Friday afternoon
• leave at 90%; ~4,800 ft of climb over the pass · arrive ~34%

Over the Newhall Pass and up through Soledad Canyon into the Antelope Valley. The climb over the pass is what makes this leg cost more than its miles.

• Mojave · Sierra Hwy · 12 stalls, 250 kW
• and 12 more at the CA-14 site · ~34% to 90%, about 35 min
• eat here — nothing at Trona, little at Red Rock

The first of three. Charge to ninety and buy dinner to carry: the Pinnacles have a vault toilet and nothing else.

• SR-14 north → Abbott Dr · ~27 mi, ~37 min
• Abbott Dr is a quarter mile west of the 14, per the park

Up the 14 with the Red Cliffs appearing on the right just before the Abbott Drive turn. Look at them now; you will not see them lit again until tomorrow.

• first-come, no reservations · $25 · self-register before setting up
• 🔴 the park: it can fill up on weekends in the spring and fall
• 🔴 an aggregator says closed for flood damage; the park page does not — call

This is the stop the plan is built around. Pay at the self-registration, put the tent up, leave it. Three extra miles over driving straight to Inyokern, and when you roll in at 20:45 in the dark the site is already yours and the tent already up. If the campground is full or closed, the night moves to Ridgecrest and nothing else on the page changes except tomorrow’s alarm.

• Abbott Dr → SR-14 → US-395 · ~26 mi, ~39 min

North past the cliffs and onto the 395, up the Indian Wells Valley.

• Inyokern · Locust Ave · 12 stalls, 250 kW · arrive ~62%
• the older Inyokern site is 4 stalls, 150 kW
• 🔴 charge to 90%, about 20–25 min from ~62% — Trona is a dead end; arrive with 60% or more

Not optional. Without it you reach the Pinnacles near forty-eight percent with the climb out of the valley still to come. With it, about seventy-five.

• SR-178 east · RM143 ~7.7 mi past Trona-Red Mountain Rd · ~32 mi, ~1h
• 5.0 mi of BLM dirt · usually 2WD, may close after heavy winter rain
• 🔴 ruts and washouts reported Dec 2025 — not verified; call BLM Friday

Through Ridgecrest and east on the 178 to the turnoff the field office describes, then five miles of dirt at walking-plus pace. The twenty minutes the page allows for the dirt is an estimate. If it is wet, or the ruts are worse than a low car should take, turn around: the evening is not worth a recovery.

• free · BLM, no gate, no hours stated
• one vault toilet · no water · pack out all trash
• sun 8° up at 17:30, sinking toward the Argus Range

Park where the road ends and walk before you shoot. More than five hundred towers, some as high as 140 feet, grown underwater in Pleistocene Searles Lake. Find three thin spires that stand clear of each other against the western sky, and find where you will stand at 18:10. Trip reports online say the road ends among the northern cluster and the classic frames look from the south; that is not verified, so trust what you see.

• on foot, east from the road’s end · ~0.1 mi, ~3 min
• sunset 18:12 at 259° · the Argus Range takes it a little earlier
• shoot west · the towers go black, the sky goes white

Walk a hundred meters east of the towers and turn around. The sun is just under the Argus Range behind them, so every spire is backlit, and every edge is a clean black line on a white sky. Expose for the sky at plus one: the towers go to charcoal with no detail, which is the print. Three thin spires, one crossing the others, nothing on the ground.

• sun 6.4° under at 18:40 · civil dusk 18:38
• face east · the Slate Range dark behind the towers
• tripod, long exposure

Turn one hundred and eighty degrees. The towers now catch the last reflected light from the western sky and stand pale against the dark Slate Range: the same subject, the tones reversed. A tripod and a few seconds. When the range and the towers merge, stop. Then one more frame: turn to the south-southwest, where a crescent moon, a third lit, sits about 25° up at 196° (USNO, for 16 October). Set one spire tip under it in a vertical frame and expose for the sky. It sets at 22:16, so there is no dark-sky star frame tonight; the moon is the night frame.

• on foot, by headlamp · ~0.1 mi, ~2 min
• the road you drove in is the way out — no other

Headlamp on before you need it. There is no signal here to call anyone if the car is not where you think it is.

• RM143 → SR-178 → US-395 → SR-14 · ~58 mi, ~1h40
• 5 mi of dirt in the dark first · ~2,200 ft of climb after
• arrive ~42% · Inyokern is on the way if you want more

Slow on the dirt in the dark, then the same road back. The route passes Inyokern again; a ten-minute top-up there is free insurance against a cold night. Quiet hours at Ricardo are reported as 22:00–06:00 (not on the park page).

• Abbott Dr → SR-14 south · ~2 mi, ~10 min
• the lot is on the east side of the 14
• 🔴 day use is sunrise to sunset per the park — see below

Out of the campground in the half-light. 🔴 The park says day use runs from sunrise, which is 07:01, so the plan arrives then; a gate at the Red Cliffs lot or Abbott Drive is not verified either way. The cliffs stay in shade well after sunrise, so the rim still comes to you. The exception, your call: if the park tells you on the phone that a camper may be at the lot from civil light, leave Ricardo at 06:10 and add the blue hour from 06:25.

• $6 per vehicle, regular day use
• civil 06:35 · sunrise 07:01 at 101°, behind the cliffs
• 8° up by 07:45 · no overnight in the day-use area

The cliffs are on the east side of the highway and their faces look west, so the sun comes up behind them: no direct light on the face in this window. That is the point. From the lot, shoot north along the fluted columns: the verticals repeat into the distance in charcoal, the rim along the skyline catches the first light, and the sky behind goes to paper at plus one. The 2023 storm damaged trails here; stay out of anything closed.

• SR-14 north → Abbott Dr east end · ~0.4 mi, ~2 min
• a left across the highway — unverified as a crossing; use judgment, and if traffic is heavy do not wait it out
• the alternative: right out of the lot, south ~3.7 mi to a turnaround and back north to Abbott Dr · ~7.8 mi, ~10 min (OSRM)

The Hagen lot sits at the east end of Abbott Drive, on the west side of the 14.

• on foot · ~1.2 mi loop, not verified
• sun 9–22° up from 108–120°
• dogs not allowed on trails, per the park

Basalt-capped walls of the same red and white sediment. The faces here look roughly east (inferred from the map), so the low sun hits them almost head-on and flat. Don’t shoot them square: walk until a wall runs away from you north or south and the sun rakes along the flutes from the side. Hiking reports call it a 1.2-mile loop from a dirt lot outside the fee area; the park page does not describe it.

• SR-14 south → Jawbone Canyon Rd · ~6 mi, ~9 min
• a right off the 14 from the north, per BLM
• the pullout is ~1 mi in from the station

Down the 14 to the BLM turn. The station is at the mouth of the canyon; the pullout is about a mile past it.

• free · BLM OHV area
• sun 27° up at 126° · behind your right shoulder
• 🔴 OHV staging Saturday morning (inferred) · never stop in a wash crossing

Pull into a wide pullout on the first mile and shoot north at the hillside, where the red and white beds lie tilted across it as diagonal bands. The sun is behind your right shoulder and fairly high, so the beds are front-lit and flat; the separation is tone, red against white, not shadow, which is exactly what a high-key frame wants. Minimal sky, one band crossing the frame corner to corner. Whether the road is paved past the station is not verified; this car stops at the first pullout either way.

• Jawbone Canyon Rd → SR-14 south · ~21 mi, ~26 min
• arrive ~25%

Down the 14, the same road you came up yesterday.

• Mojave · 12 stalls, 250 kW · Sierra Hwy or the CA-14 site
• charge to 80% · ~93 mi home with the pass to climb

The third and last. Eighty percent puts you home around a third.

• SR-14 → the 5 → the 405 · ~93 mi, ~1h50
• ~2,000 ft of climb over the pass · arrive ~32%

Back down through the Antelope Valley and over the pass. Home before the Saturday afternoon traffic sets in.