Thursday, March 19, 2015

Exploring the canyons of Death Valley


There was enough time left to explore the first of three canyons around Furnace Creek. Asked which canyon he'd recommend the young ranger at the visitor centre said, “I'd do them all. They are all different.”  

Two of the three are south of the visitor centre, but to get to the third, Mosaic Canyon, we had to drive back towards Stovepipe Wells, so it was a little further. Also, the ranger had suggested we'd choose this one for this afternoon because it provided more shade than the other two. It was blazing hot: 33 degrees Celsius. We slowly walked up to the mouth of the canyon through soft sand. We encountered a few small groups of people on their way out, but not many were on their way in, like us. For all three of the canyons it is only about a mile to hike to the end, and none of them is very strenuous. Only the heat makes it so, and once we entered the narrow, winding interior of Mosaic Canyon it wasn't very bothersome anymore. I had seen a photo of the canyon in the park brochure, taken from above, and it almost looked like people were walking through the spiraling chambers of a snail shell.

I stood and looked at the entrance to the narrow part of the canyon for a moment. The walls were so smooth that it seemed impossible to resist touching them, and indeed that was what everyone who entered did first. It is hard to imagine what force, and over how long a time, must have been needed to carve these winding paths through hard rock. At times it looks like marble, but often the walls have the most intricate patterns. Among them are those who gave the canyon its name; no human design could have been more elaborate than that of nature.




We had to climb up a few slip rocks on the way, and as usual I thought about the way back while I was carefully putting my feet into holes and on ledges providing footholds: how would I get down again? 'Nobody ever stayed up. You get down the same way you climb up', Johann said. Of course, I know that, and this wasn't very difficult, let alone dangerous. Still ... When we arrived at the first one on the way back I found the perfect solution for my dilemma. No awkward going down the rock backward, feeling for footholds: I would slide down on my bum. It was easy, and it was fun, too. I wonder how many of the visitors choose to do it my way. The smoothness of this slide, I'm sure, was not from human abrasion, however. It took forces much stronger than that. 


When we left the canyon the sun was about to set. It was still as warm as before, and even the auditorium in the visitor centre did not provide much coolness. This had changed a little bit by the time the ranger talk was over shortly before nine. We had only a short walk across the parking lot to our campground. On the walk over I had just been able to make out Venus and Jupiter in the afterglow of the sunset. Now, the sky was ablaze with stars. A huge light in the western sky almost stopped me in my tracks. What was this? It took me a moment to realize that it was Venus, now slipping slowly towards the horizon, seeming much larger than when it was still up high. It was a magical night, and for a long time I lay on my back on the picnic bench and just gazed up at the Milky Way. Two shooting stars streaked across the sky in short succession, their path still visible for a moment after they were gone. 


We had decided to explore the other two canyons in the mornings when it was not so hot yet. Golden Canyon was our destination for Monday morning, only a short drive from our campground. Here, it would have been possible to do a loop and extend the hike by another couple of miles, but since we had planned a long hike for the afternoon we felt no need to do this. 


As indicated by the ranger, this canyon is a lot different from Mosaic. The rock is much softer, and parts of it are intense gold in colour, as the name suggests. At no point did the canyon itself get as narrow as the one we had visited the night before, and its walls did not invite touching: they were rough. After about three quarters of the way a side trip into another part of the canyon will lead to a wall of red rock aptly named Red Cathedral. We followed one of the side valleys, yet the higher we got the narrower it became, and in the end we could not continue. We realized we would not get to red cathedral this way, even though we could see its top glowing above us to the right. It didn't matter: every little canyon here holds its own special beauty, and I was amply rewarded with the wildflowers I found in the gravel of the wash once we had climbed a bit higher. How anything can grow under these conditions is a mystery to me, again and again, yet plants not only survive but even thrive. A spider, its belly swollen with offspring to be born soon, crawled from a beautiful blossom of the same colour, a very pale yellow. Birds were singing, hidden somewhere in the rocks, no doubt enjoying the relative cool of morning.



As I mentioned the afternoon was dedicated to a longer hike, a ridge walk from Dante's Peak towards Mount Perry. We chose this for its higher elevation which would much reduce the heat making any activity in the valley hard during the day. 


This is a topic for a later blog posting, however. For now, I will talk about the last of the canyon hikes. Unfortunately we hadn't been able to stay for a second night at Furnace Creek campground, but the one we found at Texas Spring was not so bad either after all. We set up the tent under one of the small trees, not bothering to put on the cover since it was so warm and there was no chance whatsoever that it might rain.


On Tuesday morning we packed up after breakfast and were on our way out of Death Valley by 8:30. Badwater, the lowest point of the park and, indeed, the whole continent, was on our way, so we would briefly stop there, but first we wanted to visit Natural Bridge canyon. As the name indicates it features a rock arch about half way up, carved by the eroding forces of water. We found vertical funnels carved into the canyon wall, left over from waterfalls gushing down with incredible force, some almost like small chambers. Here again sliprocks formed obstacles to be overcome. The first ones almost seemed to form the end of the canyon, but with a bit of exploring we found a way to climb up and now could continue through the ever narrowing canyon until we could get no further without much effort and likely without putting ourselves in danger. This time the slides down on the way back were longer than at Mosaic Canyon. I was becoming quite a pro at it, while Johann still chose the more conservative mode of getting down. 


The ranger had been right: it was a good idea to visit all three of the canyons. Each one is a small world of its own, each has unique features that are worth exploring.


No comments:

Post a Comment