eath Valley National Monument is located in eastern California, along the Nevada border. It's in the desert, roughly due east of Los Angeles, and is one of the most beautiful national parks in the entire United States.

Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and that's especially true of the desert. Rocks and sand and a complete lack of trees or vegetation are definitely acquired tastes, and I can imagine some people who wouldn't like Death Valley at all.  It's a rugged, inhospitable beauty, and while there are a number of natural springs and oasis areas in Death Valley, most of the time you're hiking or driving somewhere that would kill you in a day, if you lost your water and your way.  Well, if there weren't thousands of other tourists all over the place to get help from, that is.

I've been to Death Valley half a dozen times in my life, and always enjoyed it. I went with my mom every other year or so when I was oh, age 10-18 or so, and we were poor and didn't mind roughing it, so we camped out and slept in a tent and went hiking all day and walked over to the communal showers at the middle of the campground.  For this most recent visit we were a lot less rough, her husband came along, and we all stayed in a nice hotel room with a shower and two queen beds.

We still did a lot of hiking and driving around though, and this time, unlike my childhood visits, I was accompanied by a digital camera.  As these two pages of photos and captions attest. Enjoy.

Death Valley Areas Photographed:

• Page One:
  • High Desert
  • Furnace Creek Ranch
  • Artists Palette
  • Furnace Creek Resort
  • Scotty's Castle
  • Ubehebe Crater
• Page Two:
  • Mosaic Canyon
  • Sand Dunes
  • Salt Flats
  • Golden Canyon and Zabriskie Point
  • Badwater Basin

Mosaic Canyon

One of the more popular hikes in Death Valley, Mosaic Canyon winds up into the mountains for a couple of miles of relatively low-impact trekking. There is a wide variety of scenery though, including narrow channels with marble and granite side walls, wider stretches with gravel, flood plains fifty meters across, and numerous side treks and gullies I would love to explore more fully, someday.

A shot from early on, with mom and Glenn leading the way. These stone sides thrust up from the earth at odd angles, and have persisted much longer than the crumbly hillsides above them. In lots of places there are these ramp-like rock walls on both sides, and yes, you can walk up them and sometimes leap from one side to the other.

I've been here in the past when there was not so much gravel, and this whole thing was almost like a big bathtub. The rock is very slippery and smooth, almost like a counter top. Little kids are constantly sitting down and using it as a slide.

A shot of some of the winding narrows near the beginning of the canyon. Water rushing down from above fills this to a height of 15 or 20 meters, as the frequent splashes of dried mud high up the walls attests.

I find the geology of this place amazing. How stone can change so in just an inch, as a new layer is formed with an entirely different consistency?

Everyone loves to leave little rock stacks as signs that they've hiked somewhere, and the flat slabs of shale that fall all over the sides of Mosaic Canyon provide excellent building material. It's more common to build one of these up on top of something difficult to climb, rather than right in the center of a path, but it gives the kids something to do.

A view of the setting sun on the canyon wall, from way up the hike. Mosaic Canyon is odd in the way it goes from a huge, wide floodplain down to shower-width channels cut through much harder stone.

The first of the two dry waterfalls. This one can be easily skirted by taking a side path about one hundred yards down the trail, or you can just climb it, as I always do. It's easy enough to walk up the dirt part, and then climb the stone from left to right, moving on all fours to keep your balance. You can see where the water pours down, from right to left, and eats away the stone.

This is the dry waterfall that really ends the Mosaic Canyon hike. It's a good 4 or 5 meters straight up, and there aren't any handholds since the water smoothes the tops of the stones, while leaving rough edges underneath. It would be an easy climb if gravity were somehow reversed, but that's about as likely as the Creationist fairy tale that all of this was somehow formed in a few years when the floods that carried Noah's Ark subsided.

Anyway, this wall could also be climbed with pitons, but I've never carried any up there to do so. Someday, perhaps. I love the way the rock has aged and been worn away; see the subtle shaping to the left, where the water shoots out over the edge and scallops the rock?

• Another view, from the left.

Here's a vertiginous shot straight up the waterfall. 

Looks easy from this angle, but the tops of these hand and toeholds are all smooth and eroded by the water, so there's very little to grip. It could be free-climbed by a really good rock climber though, since the rock is rough, jagged, and very hard so it won't crumble under your weight.  You'd have to brace your feet sideways in these nooks, and pull yourself up with your fingertips. I can go up about two meters in that fashion, but I don't have the strength to do the whole thing that way, and there's no way I could get down back down if I did make it up. There isn't anywhere nearby to go around this either; all of the canyon walls are a good hundred meters high and crumbly and very steep.

The Sand Dunes

This shot is from the side of the highway, near Stovepipe Wells. Everyone parks along the side of the highway, on a wide, gravel shoulder, and walks over rocks and scrub brush to where the sand begins.

Here's a shot of the Dunes from Stovepipe Wells, taken the day before. We were going to hike them the day before, on our way back from Mosaic Canyon, but it got windy in the afternoon, and by the time we had lunch and were looking at this part of the drive, the wind was really gusting and turning the sand dunes into a sand storm. It would have been interesting, but I couldn't have taken my camera without having it ruined by the blowing sand, and I doubt the human eye would have done much better, in that dust.

A view of the dunes from the road about six miles from Stovepipe Wells, near Devil's Golf Course. I love the purple mountains in the background.

The transition between rocky desert floor to sand dunes is a quick one.  It looks almost artificial, like someone dumped a bunch of trucks of sand out there.

These odd features are found at the base of most depressions in the sand. They look like clay, but are very crumbly and fragile, and break beneath your feet when you walk on them or even touch them. They're basically dirt pies, half-baked. I assume they form when the water pools there and dries in the sun.

The hollow spot here is a mystery to me, but I took a photo of it since someone left a hat in the center of the hole. And yes, I think we can rule out quicksand as a cause.

There were large bushes all over the hills closest to the road. Quite a few of them were dead though, for no obvious reason. 

• Another from the dead tree series.

This weird bush caught my eye since the greenery was all turned to golden orange, and there was a clear burrow in the center. I'd assume there are sand rats or some other type of small mammals here, and that they can eat nuts or leaves or something.  It can't be much of a life, though.

Out beyond the last dune (well, last going from the road. But since the tallest are the furthest out, and they're also the darkest with the freshly-blown silica, I suppose they're the first dunes, if you look at it in that direction.) there is an entire gully absolutely full of greenery. I suppose enough moisture must blow in along with the wind to sustain them. They're odd plants too, unlike the others in the area, with weird enough leaves or tendrils or whatever they are that I had to take a close up. They look succulent, but are actually very dry and feel almost hollow when you squeeze them.

One of the joys of these dunes is that they cover a relatively large area and are slow and tiring to trek across. Hence once you go out more than a mile from the road, towards the last and tallest of the dunes, there's hardly anyone there. A beach covered in tracks is not interesting. A single trail winding along by itself is another story, though.

It's funny too; you see everyone else's trail snaking and winding around, and you think, "Why do they walk so crooked? I'll walk straight and save steps." And then you walk a while and turn around and your path always looks like this. The natural undulations of the sand force you to walk around them and turn to head straight up little hills, since if you walk around them sideways you'll break the crust and slow down. You really can't help it.

• More foot tracks up a dune.
• Zig zagging trails up the dune.

Like most things, the dunes are easy to walk down, but hard to climb up. They're also hard to walk across, even on the flat, since your feet usually sink into the sand. It crusts though, and if you place your weight carefully you can usually keep from breaking it on the flat stretches, and save yourself the effort of sliding down half a foot with every step you take.

Climbing them is tiring too, and once you're on top, it's often easier to walk along the ridge than it is to go up and down, or down and up. This rather well-worn path leads up to the tallest of the all, upon which I'm standing in the next shot down.

• Dunes and the desert beyond.

Looking down from the highest and nearly the last dune, you see this long trail of green little hummocks. Perhaps they're growing along a water channel that only exists when it rains?  Or there's a different consistency of soil down there, since the sand blows in and gets stuck on the dune to the left? I have no idea.

Also, notice the black grit there. That's freshly blown in from the desert; you see hardly any black or gray sand further into the dunes, where the sand is much more uniform tan and beige.

I saw this odd track out on the dunes, but I do not know what made it. Click the image to see it larger with a footprint next to it for scale. The only living things I saw were ants, and this certainly wasn't made by one of them. It's not a snake trail, and the foot prints are much too narrow to be from a lizard. I'd guess some sort of centipede, but what made the track down the middle, and the rounded spots every foot or so?

It was not made by a human, unless they could fly, since it went on and on for at least fifty feet, and there were no footprints anywhere near it other than the ones I made.

Many of the dunes are untracked and pristine, or nearly so, and the wind reshapes them constantly, vanishing tracks over a day or two. The individual dunes change shape, but the overall layout remains much the same, and the dunes do not move up or down the valley from this location.  Aside from Ubehebe Crater, this is probably my favorite place in Death Valley.

Click for a larger view.

Salt Flats

Any low, flat area of the desert tends to accumulate salt. Water comes just a few times a year, has nowhere to drain, and slowly dissolves in the heat and sun. This shot was taken 20 miles from the famed Badwater, the lowest spot on North or South America. There are photos of that place later, and it's far larger, far drier, and far saltier. This was a long stretch of flat land just a quarter mile or so from the highway, that we kept debating about as we drove by. We could not tell if there was actually standing water on it, or if the shimmer was a mirage, so finally we stopped the car and I hiked down to it. This shot is looking back towards the road, though I can't see any cars from here. The road is not very far away; it's much closer to me than it is to that rise of low rise of brown hills, and the mountains in the background are miles off.

My biggest surprise was the terrain. It looked like flat, rocky desert straight down to the salt flats from the road, but once I walked down I soon found myself walking through streams and channels cut into bluffs. The hill in this shot is about neck-high, and yes, that's salt covering it, not snow. The green plants grew up since the salt formed, or they'd be white too. Dead bushes and reeds in the creeks were totally encrusted and hardened by salt.

Yes, it was water. This strip is about 3 meters wide here, and it ran on for at least a kilometer or so. The water appeared to be flowing, but I think it was just the wind blowing surface grit and vegetation along, since there was no lake for it to flow into, and the strip of water ended maybe 100 meters to the left.  I walked around it the first time, then jumped over it on my return, since I'd walked down a ways.

The ground near the water was very odd. Almost like sand, but sort of clay-like too, and capable of taking the clearest impressions possible. Almost none of it stuck to my sandals; it just reformed beneath my weight, and it was only wet for maybe a centimeter down; below that the soil was so dense that no water penetrated through it.

It looks hard as a rock, but it's actually moist and sticky, as my sandal prints attest. The white sand blobs are hard and formed of endless little balls of sand. I'd call them sand pearls, if they came from sand oysters. They form into pea-sized orbs that are hard as rocks, and can just be picked off the ground. And eaten, if you have a pretzel or something like that to stick them on.

• Large view of more salt spots amidst the brown dirt.

That any water remained on the surface was surprising to me, but more so was the sheer amount of it. Aside from the weird, low tide-like beach stretch, there were numerous little pot holes like this one, full of salt and an inch of very unpotable liquid.

You'll see a few more like this later, in the shots from Badwater. I do not understand how this sort of thing happens; why is there flat salt one place, and broken, shrapnel-looking mud or salt-encrusted mud an inch away? This strip of flat salt ran for a good 20 meters, right through the middle of a large field of the rough, chewed-up mud. And no, the rough stuff isn't man made; there aren't any tire tracks or cleat marks out here. I assume the summer heat causes the mud to bubble up in some places, and when it bursts it dries like this. The brown stuff you see here is bone dry; it cracks and crumbles to dust if you step on it.  Perhaps all mud would dry like this, if no one ever stepped on it and the dirt was fine enough to form these delicate sharp edges.

Golden Canyon and Zabriske Point

Golden Canyon and Zabriskie Point are two of the most popular sites/hikes in Death Valley National Monument. Conveniently, they are located back to back, and it's quite easy to hike from one to the other. You'll want a ride though, since the drive from one to the other is about 8 miles, as the road winds around the low mountain range that the canyon cuts through.

For my hike I went up Golden Canyon with mom and Glenn, then continued on to Zabriskie Point when they turned back. Or so I thought; as it turned out they went on up the canyon a bit, and then explored one of the delicious side canyons on the way back. As a result I got to Zabriskie Point maybe 20 minutes before they drove around, and with the sun setting, the temperature dropped very quickly, and me in shorts and a t-shirt, with just a light long sleeved shirt carried as a concessions to motherly advice and impending sunset. I was happy to get into the heated car when they pulled up, let me tell you.

The scale is hard to judge in these shots, but you can certainly see why they call it "Golden Canyon." The peaks above are much harder rock than the sandstone type stuff closer to the canyon, and they tower above quite regally.  There are literally dozens and dozens of these side shoots, every one of which look simply irresistible to my "must climb up the climby thing" impulses. The highest peaks are maybe oh... 300 meters up?

• A zoomed close up of one of the delicious side trails.
• Another tempting side canyon hike, with giant fallen boulder.

At the end of Golden Canyon you arrive at this rock feature. It's called Red Cathedral, for fairly obvious reasons, and looks even redder than usual, in the sunset. I'm actually around to the Zabriskie Point side here, but the cathedral looks pretty much the same from any direction, towering above in reddish fashion.

This is almost certainly the prettiest picture I took in Death Valley, so do click it to see it full sized.  I'm standing on the trail to Zabriskie Point from Golden Canyon, after climbing up a fairly-demanding stretch. The Golden Canyon path is way down in the valley there, just below the brown-capped rocks to the right.  The golden hills look solid, but they're far from it. You can literally run right down them; a hard crust cracks under weight and it's like sand underneath. This is recommended against though, since you can literally do several millennia worth of damage by taking one quick shortcut.

Some places are too steep, and some are studded with boulders, as you can see here, but it's surprising how crumbly the hills are in this region.

• Another somewhat less-impressive view.

That there is the actual Zabriskie Point. It's something you see, not something you climb on, and the road and parking area if well behind where I'm standing in this photo. You can walk out to it though, in fact I walked right around the base of it, following the trail from Golden Canyon. That's Red Cathedral over to the right.

Another shot of Red Cathedral, from the Zabriskie Point side. Amazing how much more interesting hills are when they were pushed up out of the earth diagonally, and you get to see the interesting striped patters on them, isn't it?

Click for a larger view.

Badwater Basin

Just like the sign says, this is 282 feet/85.5 meters below sea level, and much like Rome before it, in Death Valley, all streams flow to Badwater. There actually is water here, as you'll see in other shots, and this wooden thing is a sort of dock sitting on pontoons that allow it to float up and down in rainy season. Things were pretty dry during our late November visit, but last winter they had the most rain in Death Valley in recorded history, and this basin was actually lake. People were out there in kayaks and such, though the water was only a couple of feet deep.

Millions of years ago this entire area was under hundreds of feet of water, and the lake bed silt turned into rock of interesting colors, much to our present sight seeing benefit.  It's not usually this crowded there; a bit tour bus had just arrived, and most of the people here had gotten off of it. And yes, it was damn chilly this early morning, hence the coats and such. Cold in the shade, nice in the sun though. I was fine in cargo pants and a t-shirt, and got sweaty running back from way, way, way out on the flats, as later photos will attest.

• A view of this pier and sign, from the higher vantage point of the parking lot.

Looking up the hills, away from the basin, brings you this site. See that little white rectangle way up there? Click to see it bigger.

That's what it says, way up there. And now you know how far up 85.5 meters appears to be. This cliff is quite near the road too.

The sign is not meant to be climbed up to, there's no path or anything, though it wouldn't be that difficult with the rough rock giving good hand and footholds. There is a gloriously-deep gorge just to the left of the sign though, and it looks incredibly enticing. I would have hit it on this trip, if this hadn't been our last day and I hadn't been wearing my only remaining clean clothing, and sandals.

Another shot of the salty, brackish water, from the pier. Click for a larger view.

Here's what the water actually looks like. There are pupfish in it, tiny little minnow type things that can live in the saline solution. They lay eggs that survive when summer dries the water entirely, and hatch once the rains come again. Note the salt formed atop that one rock that pokes up above the ankle-deep water.

The salt flats were much different than we'd seen them in past visits. Years ago, in drier years, all of this was cracked and buckled, like the mud often is in a desert. You could stick your finger down between the cracks and pick up solid blocks of salt that had to be 3 inches deep. Dirt lay below them, so it's not like the salt is 50 feet deep or something.

This time the salt flats were very rough and cracked, and the ground was damp below the top layer of salt. Lots of places were just muddy dirt, dried into lattice work shapes. 

The ground looks a bit like a giant crumb cake, except the salt and salty dirt probably wouldn't actually taste very good.

• Long and colorful view up the valley.

Me and mom and mom and Glenn. Why didn't just give the camera to a bystander and take care of this in one shot? You can't see them, but our shoes were ruined by this trek. Sticky, salty mud covered the treads and sides from our steps in mushy places, and we all three had to take them off back in the parking lot, beat them together, and store them in plastic bags for the drive home, so we didn't irreparably track gunk into the carpet of Glenn's new car.

So we walked out onto the flats, and thought we saw some sort of structure off in the distance. It was hard to be certain though, on the shimmering flatness, but it was our last day there and I have strong legs, so I started walking. And kept walking. And kept walking. This was like case in point about distances being deceptive in the desert.

I did eventually reach it though, as you can see.  It's some sort of weather station thingie, and it's been there a while, judging by the salt build up on the legs. The thing on top is a solar cell to power something, and there's a little spinning wind measuring device as well.

Why didn't the evaporation build up thick salt legs all the way down? It's literally six inches thick on all sides of the metal pipes, and I could probably have picked one of the three off of the pipes in the foreground. They felt like very heavy beehives, and were not stuck to the sides; I could make them rotate. Perhaps the water after last winter's floods dried up slowly at first, and then when it was 120+ every day in July-September, it evaporated too quickly to build up much salt?

• Another shot, looking back towards the basin.

The salt even built up even on the coiled cords. And see that wide, thin ring further down? Odd. Slow evaporation for a week let the floating surface salt catch on?

Doesn't it look a bit like a penguin, at first glance/out of the corner of your eye?

Two views of the same interesting footprint. It looks like someone stepped on dry surface mud that rested on wet subsoil. It cracked in sheets, then water seeped up from below and left behind salt as it evaporated. Such is life in a salt flat.

That's it for the Death Valley photos. I do hope to return in the next few years though, perhaps even with a better camera!

• You've only seen half the photos! Click here to go back to Death Valley 2005, page one.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.