ADVENTURER HIKES PERILOUS PATHWAY.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

For the next 30 to 35 days, Lee Bergthold will trek across northwestern Nevada and then head south to Death Valley, a journey of some 350 miles.

Bergthold will retrace trails used in the 1800s across rugged terrain that includes a geothermal badland extending from Nevada's Humboldt River to Walker Lake Basin. From there, Bergthold will continue south toward Badwater in Death Valley.

``This is the way I hone my skills,'' said Bergthold, a lean, fit 61-year-old former Marine Corps survival instructor. ``This is what I do.''

The trek is the latest adventure for Bergthold, a photojournalism instructor at Antelope Valley College who has spent 40 years hiking the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. Bergthold spends 50 to 60 days a year in the backcountry.

In 1989, Bergthold and companion Jerry Freeman of Pearblossom traveled 125 miles from Badwater, the lowest point in the United States at 282 feet below sea level, to Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the continental United States at 14,492 feet.

``We had 110 degrees on one end and 50 below on the other,'' Bergthold said. ``We got hit by a terrible blizzard on Mt. Whitney. It nearly blew us off the mountain.''

In 1993, Bergthold and Lancaster attorney Terry Baird hiked 50 miles from Pasadena to Acton - straight across the San Gabriel Mountains - to see if commuters stranded by an earthquake could hoof it back into the Antelope Valley.

Bergthold ended that trek with this piece of advice: Don't try it.

This past winter, he completed a 6-year effort to locate Hungry Bill's Ranch in the Panamint Mountains in Death Valley. A century ago, the ranch was a supply camp where fruits and vegetables were grown and taken over a mountain pass into miners in Panamint City.

The Panamints are rich in lore, an area where a number of miners were killed in disputes and by nature, Bergthold said.

``You won't like my ghost stories. My ghost stories are true,'' Bergthold said. ``These places where men and women die seem to have an aura about them.''

During Bergthold's first attempt six years ago to find the ranch, one of his companions, a Lancaster woman named Reney Enguita, wrote in her journal that she was followed by a strange figure for seven days on the trek. Enguita died of heart failure two days after the trek.

Bergthold plans to return to the Panamints to further explore Indian worship towers he encountered during one of his expeditions.

Bergthold was born in Bakersfield and raised in Fresno. As a teen-ager, he worked as a firefighter and did trail construction work with the U.S. Forest Service.

``All I wanted to do as a kid was be in the mountains,'' Bergthold said.

After serving as a survival instructor in the Marine Corps from 1953 to 1956, Bergthold first studied ergonomics - the science of adopting working conditions to suit the worker - at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then photography at the Brooks Institute of Photography.

Since then, Bergthold has merged photography and his hiking adventures. His photographs have been featured in Backpacker magazine and in gallery exhibits, include the Lancaster Museum/Art Gallery. For the past 20 years, Bergthold has been an instructor at Antelope Valley College and run backpacking expeditions.

On this latest adventure, Bergthold will first travel from Battle Mountain to Walker Lake Basin - a path taken by emigrant wagon trains in the mid-1800s. At Walker Lake Basin, pioneers, including the ill-fated Donner party, went west to the Sierras.

The Donner party - 87 men, women and children - was caught by heavy snows in November 1846 at a mountain pass near Truckee. Blocked by snow, the party settled at a nearby lake for the winter. Thirty-four people died and survivors resorted to eating the flesh of the dead.

At Walker Lake Basin, Bergthold is heading south to Death Valley.

``It's a survival route the Donners could have taken instead of plowing into the Sierras,'' Bergthold said. ``They could have gone south.''

Bergthold will backpack with a 10-day supply of food. Support workers will drop off supplies every 10 days. Bergthold chose to hike in winter because of the possibility that rain and snow will provide water.

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Photo: Backpacking expert Lee Bergthold has trekked through some of the most forbidding terrain in the state, like these Panamint Mountains.

Photo courtesy Lee Bergthold