All Quiet in Death Valley (Weds. February 17)

Furnace Creek is a very quiet campground. Hardly anyone seems to sit out in the evening. By the time we went to bed at 10:30pm, we seemed to be the only people still outside their RVs. There are also a few people in tents – they seem to go to bed earlier. I guess that people are trying to get an early start, which is highly recommended if you are planning to go for a walk.

This morning we were at the Golden Canyon trail head by 9:00am. Our plan was to walk the Golden Canyon’s interpretive trail, then continue on either the Zabrieski Point spur, or make the walk into a loop by taking the Gower Gulch trail. In the event, 500 feet of climbing persuaded the kids that there was no way they wanted to climb a further 400 feet to Zabrieski Point so we did the loop. It really was pretty steep. The walk was about four miles. I felt very virtuous!

Anyway, Hubby’s photos will no doubt show the glories of the landscape, so I’ll just make a few comments. When we started down the trail it was pleasant and fairly cool. By the time we arrived back at the RV three hours later, we were all very hot. It’s probably in the mid to high 70sF by noon, though the hottest part of the day is actually 2:00pm to 3:00pm. The walk through the Golden Canyon was impressive – that’s pretty much what we say every five minutes: “Wow, look at that rock formation, isn’t it impressive?” – and quite varied. Much of the canyon is mudstone, but there is also a magnificent red cliff – “Red Cathedral” - which looks like draperies and buttresses made of delicately carved stone.

One of the things that has really struck us about Death Valley is how colorful it is. Brought up on Westerns and Laurence of Arabia, we tend to think of desert as yellow sand, but Death Valley is far from that archetype. Every set of cliffs is awash with a wide palette of colors: yellows, greens, pinks, reds, purples, black, cream, even a little blue. The variety is astonishing. Little Starlet is in rock collector’s heaven, though it makes the walking slow (and, of course, we tell her that she can’t keep more than one or two little rocks from the many finds she makes).

After we walked through the Golden Canyon itself, we climbed up to the sheer face of Manly Peak (named after a man called Mr Manly, not a statement of how butch you need to be to get there) – which reminded Deep Thought of Half Dome in Yosemite - and then turned left into the winding, damp bed of the gulch. This part of the walk was rough, rocky and winding. Little Starlet lost the will to live after about an hour, but Deep Thought insisted that the end was “just around the corner” and generally went all girl scoutish on us to keep our spirits up. It made a change from the waves of teenage hormones that have been somewhat evident on this trip…. We passed the entrances to several abandoned borax mines created, it seems, by lone miners mostly in the 19th century. Little Starlet and Hubby went to stand inside one of the most cavern-like, but carefully did not move further than the entrance as we have heard all about the hazardous nature of these mines (hazards which can sometimes include abandoned and, by now, unstable dynamite).

The gulch took us through what is termed the “badlands”. Arid and bleak, very little clings to life here, just the occasional desert holly. Deep Thought saw a lizard on the trail, the first we have seen since arriving. Putting ourselves in the shoes of the pioneers, we felt that if we’d ended up in a place like this, we’d have simply given up hope of survival. Those old timers sure were tough.

At lunchtime, back at Furnace Creek, we spotted a kangaroo rat. This is one of the few mammals that lives around here; the coyote is at the top of the food chain. Kangaroo rats are notable for having nostrils that enable them to reabsorb the moisture that they would otherwise breathe out. Little Starlet said it was like “a big chipmunk with a super curly tail”, which is a pretty good description.

Later in the afternoon we headed out to the sand dunes close to Stovepipe Wells. We left it a little late, so we only had half an hour of the best light. (Hubby was frustrated to be thwarted in his plans to take a hundred photos of sand.) We decided to yomp across the sand towards the highest dune and it was great fun. Deep Thought and Little Starlet headed off in one direction while Hubby and I took another, but it was all very safe as we could see each other (and the many other people) all the time. The sand is super soft, but easy to walk across with a modicum of determination. The walk from the parking lot and back is about a mile and a half. Again, it’s another dramatic but really different landscape. This one fitted better with our preconceptions of what a desert should look like, but in fact sand dunes make up only a very small percentage of the overall acreage of Death Valley.

We were surprised to spot a couple of kids on sleds sliding down one of the steepest dunes. My kids thought they were crazy but they looked like they were having fun. Erosion is not an issue in the sand dunes area, it seems. Visitors are allowed to walk wherever they like, and the wind tidies up and makes it neat again. If time allows, we plan to revisit the dunes on Friday.