Death Valley in Winter

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January, 2009

I had time for a winter trip. I thought at one point about heading north to Mt. Lassen. But roads in this mountain park are closed throughout the season. And so in the midst of considering other mountain or coastal travels in Northern California, I realized my mistake.

It was winter. I needed to head south.

I had only been through Death Valley once, a midnight run between a hiking weekend along Highway 395 and a Monday business meeting in Las Vegas. So I had never seen the valley beyond the scope of my headlights. I had felt it however. The heat, even at midnight, baked right through my car. I figured a January trip would make a lot more sense.

Following a massive tire blowout at Delano, my planned afternoon crossing of the mountains by way of Lake Isabella turned into an evening one. I spent the night in a cheap Ridgecrest motel and then got up at 5 am Wednesday for my first full day in the valley. The sunrise caught me heading north on 178 just about as I crossed the ridge into Panamint Valley. Towne Pass further up in the Panamint Mountains brought me to within my first sight of Death Valley. Broken cloud cover allowed scattered beams of light to make a patchwork of the valley floor. These clouds would be a constant companion over the next three days, frequently frustrating and yet on a few occasions greatly enhancing my attempts at decent photography. That is what clouds do.

The gift shop at Stovepipe Wells had just opened and the coffee was hot. I filled up my thermos and headed out listening to Yes, South Side of the Sky. Right near the edge of the visitor parking lot a sign indicates that I had just crossed down below sea level for the first time. A few miles east of the road rise the Mesquite Dunes before the valley floor turns upward again into the Amargosa Mountains and specifically, above the dunes, the picturesque Death Valley Buttes.

My goals for this morning’s introduction to Death Valley were Zabriskie Point and Dante's View, neither of which I knew anything about other than their names. Zabriskie Point, it turns out, is less a view of the valley than a magnificent vista of geology. Erosion has cut through the soft, mud-like sediments to leaving peaks and fins and mounds and revealing strata in a red, tan, and brown color scheme. It looks like a pile of melting vanilla-fudge ice cream. Zabriskie Point is the location for the front cover shot of U2's album The Joshua Tree. There is not actually a Joshua Tree on the front cover, just the band and this desert view. We'll get to a discussion of the back cover shortly.

Dante's View on the other hand is a high pinnacle several miles further south which juts out over the abrupt slope down into Badwater Basin. This is the definitive viewpoint for Death Valley National Park. The entire southern portion of the valley stretches out unobstructed below you. Directly across the valley and defining the western edge of it rise Telescope Peak and the Panamint Mountains. The valley floor is covered with salty expanses of basins and marshes. For all of its aridity, drainage patterns come in just second to uplifted geology in the defining features of Death Valley. Alluvial fans leave their characteristic semi-circle deposits which affect the route of the lone valley highway, a southern extension of 178. Gazing at the view southwards, the slope and pattern of jagged rocks jutting from the ground below my feet matched in microcosm the very fault and block pattern of geology which created this famous valley and indeed the entire western Basin and Range province.

Accompanying the sudden elevation, and the steepness of the precipice, were periodic visits from the US Air Force out of China Lake, I guess. I never saw the actual jets, but their screech and roar nearly cracked the sky open above me. I hunkered down nearly clinging to the rocks a few times to weather this apocalypse. The gods themselves must be offended by such an affront to their power.

From 5,700 feet up on Dante's View, I next travelled back down into the Valley to Badwater Basin below sea level, the famous “lowest point in the United States.” Here, a Stanford Geology professor was holding a class field trip, and the first drops from what would be two days of intermittent rain began to fall. I found it wonderfully ironic that here I was on my first trip to Death Valley, and it was raining. Badwater is actually named such because it has standing water year round. The water is locally fed by a spring, but the salty valley floor contaminates the water too much for drinking, thus the basin's name. The salt deposits across the valley floor are very dirty, as you would expect out here in the dusty desert. Tourist footprints have worn a cleaner salty white path out from the Basin boardwalk into the flats. I too followed this path out perhaps a half mile or more. Looking back I could see the "Sea Level" sign posted 282 feet up on the rocks behind the parking lot.

It is quiet out here. I could detect no birds, no bugs, no critters. I could hear the wind, and occasionally a car on the distant road, but that's it. The Air Force was on its lunch hour but the raindrops had begun their percussion. Eleven thousand feet above me loomed Telescope Peak, the stormbringer, peeking in and out of heavy clouds. I sat down for a while to take in the scene. I carried salty marks on my shoes and butt for the rest of the trip

I spent the afternoon leisurely driving north along 178. I stopped to hike up the arid wash and canyon which leads to the Natural Bridge formation and later drove and hiked around the beautiful Artist's Palette area with the sun and clouds playing tricks across the colorful landscape. Some of the dunes, pinnacles and canyons of Death Valley doubled as the desert planet Tatooine in George Lucas’ classic Star Wars films. R2D2 himself rolled forlornly across the Mesquite Dunes I had driven past this morning, and then headed up the canyons around the Artist's Palette for his confrontation with the Jawas. I was pleasantly amazed after the fact to learn that some of my pictures from this day had actually captured scenes which can be viewed in the movie itself. This is not something I would have necessarily sought out, but I admit I am nerd enough to fully enjoy this discovery 30-years after the fact of my childhood Star Wars amazement.

The afternoon of Day One was getting on, and my regular sustenance of Gorp and water needed some variety. I enjoyed a walk around the historic spring-fed palm oasis at the Furnace Creek Inn, but the atmosphere within was too formal and civilized for me to stick around. I located myself instead over to the more down to earth Furnace Creek Ranch where the Corkscrew Saloon seemed far more tolerant of the dirty, sweaty, salty hiker looking for a refreshing beer.

I was not staying at Furnace Creek however. For that purpose I had to travel 50 miles back to Panamint Springs which offers certainly the most affordable lodging in the park (my initial motivation). Panamint Springs offers perfectly suitable small bungalow accommodations in addition to camp and RV sites. The restaurant and bar however are what set this place apart. Burgers, breakfasts, and more. The extraordinarily wide beer selection was completely unexpected this far out in the arid boonies, and much appreciated. My order of a tall pint of Fat Tire was met from the bartender with an in depth discussion and introduction to his preferred Firestone DBA. A complimentary half-pint was provided as proof and a lazy evening of outdoor desert beer consumption ensued. Now that’s hospitality.

On my next trip I would like to stay here again and try hiking back from the resort into the mountains toward the Darwin Waterfall. I would also like to try staying in Stovepipe or Furnace Creek to see how much of a difference it makes staying closer in.

Thursday morning began with a long drive up to Scotty's Castle in the far north of the park. The attraction is in actuality a 1920s Chicago millionaire's desert retreat. That it was able to function self-sufficiently out here in what was an even more remote backcountry than it is today is an engineering marvel unto itself. You must pay for a guided tour if you wish to see the inside of the house. I did, and thoroughly enjoyed the interior. That it is surrounded with a series of Wild West tall tales involving the inimitable Scotty however is only marginally interesting at best. It is a nice enough desert house worthy of a visit all on its own. The site offers an additional tour of the 1920s tunnels and underground technologies which allowed the Castle operate in this harsh climate. I would like to take that tour on my next visit. But after the house tour, I was itching to get back out into nature.

Next on my agenda was the magnificent, and musically named Ubehebe Crater. The half-mile wide volcanic crater rises out of the desert sediment floor, having blasted out a relatively recent 4-7 thousand years ago. The National Park trail takes the steeply rising southern rim of the main crater up to an extremely windy ridge between it and its small cousin, the Little Hebe Crater which blasted out only about 300 years ago. The hike takes place through black shifting cinder deposits which will fill up your shoes no matter how carefully you walk. Trying to avoid that is essentially hopeless if you plan on walking at all, and so I gave in to the inevitable and cleaned my filthy shoes out and changed my blackened socks once I got back to the car. The 1.5-2 mile hike is still extremely enjoyable and worthwhile.

Heading down the 50 mile drive back to Furnace Creek and my planned afternoon adventures, I had one of the defining moments of the trip. Now 50 miles is a long way, and the great expanse of Death Valley provides a wide vista. Upon this stage unfolded a desert rainstorm in three magnificent acts which I was able to watch as I completed my southerly drive. Act One was a buildup of dark, heavy clouds and the tension of the coming storm to the west over the Panamint Mountains. Act Two was one of action, with the rains surging down from the peaks and washing across the valley floor. Act Three was one of calm beauty and redemption, as the storm continued up and away into the eastern Amargosa Mountains and the sunlight cast strange illuminations onto the desert through the filter of remaining clouds. This turned out to be a great time for photos.

The remainder of my afternoon was occupied with a Furnace Creek Ranch lunch, and then a long meandering walk up Golden Canyon which is actually the lower reaches of the formation I had previously visited the top of, Zabriskie Point. These eroded mudstone strata of an ancient lake bed form a labyrinth of channels leading upward toward the point. The higher you climb, the more varied the strata and colors become, until you arrive at the abrupt and impressive wall of the Red Cathedral formation. Although no further rain appeared likely, clouds had completely taken over the sky by this point and the dull even wash of light was deadly for my photographs, especially in the lower, most uniformly yellow reaches of the canyon. I will come back on a sunny day specifically to try and make more out of the photographic potential of this strange landscape.

I had desired to also fit in a hike up Mosaic Canyon before the afternoon came to a close. On my way there the clouds and sunlight were generous again just as I was passing by the Mesquite Dunes and so I spent another hour or so running around with the camera. By the time I made it to Stovepipe Wells and the Mosaic Canyon turnoff darkness was already again falling. And so Mosaic Canyon will be another reason for my Death Valley return visit along with the full Golden Canyon to Zabriskie Point hike. I am also considering a climb to the top of Tin Mountain and overnight camping at the Racetrack. I will tackle the washboard road which reaches these last two with a 4W vehicle rather than my Toyota Camry however.

As I rose out of the valley and approached Towne Pass heading west, I once again encountered ominously encroaching storm clouds. These looked serious, and this time the storm would stay with me. Panamint Valley was dark and rainy. I enjoyed the rainy desert evening with a burger and a number of beers from the Panamint Springs restaurant’s covered outdoor porch.

The next morning my time was up. I needed to return home to the Bay Area. Highway 190 took me directly west from Panamint Springs and out of the National Park boundary line. Low clouds, fog, and occasional rain followed my progress. The highway rose with the Darwin Hills up into the clouds, and brought what was to me the strange site of Joshua Trees in full rain and fog. Somewhere in these hills is rumored to be the actual Joshua Tree photographed for the back cover of U2’s aforementioned album. The actual tree itself has died and fallen now, or so I have read. But its remains and the vista of hills captured in Anton Corbijn’s now famous black and white photograph are still visited by occasional fans who have carved memorials and left mementos of their devotion. In the mist, and not knowing my way to the exact spot, I decided to pass on this pilgrimage myself, at least until another time.

Past the Darwin Hills, Highway 190 rounds the southern edge of the Inyo Mountains and skirts the once great Owens Lake before intersecting Highway 395, the great east side thoroughfare and destination in its own right. I have other adventures up and down this highway for future entries. But for today, it was quite simply, and somewhat unfortunately, my misty route back to civilization.

http://www.lkmac.com/SMC/deathvalley.html

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Photos

A wet day on Owens Lake
What a scene.