Death Valley, Golden Canyon

Sunday morning greeted us with sunshine, but it was still quite cool in Beatty. Our plan was to stop at the visitor centre in Furnace Creek, choose a hike from a brochure we'd pick up there, and leave Death Valley National Park on Hwy.178 with a stop at Badwater, the lowest point. From there we'd bypass Las Vegas and spend the night in Boulder City.

Thanks to the information we received at the Beatty saloon the night before we knew to turn off onto the shortcut to Furnace Creek. Here, Johann had been told, would be a prime area for seeing the desert in bloom. It started slowly, with a few fragile plants here and there on the rocky surface, in itself a seemingly impossible medium to foster any plant life. The narrow road descended gently toward the valley which was bordered by snow capped peaks in the distance. Such opposites! The lowest point of Death Valley – the whole north American continent – is 85m below sea level, Telescope Peak, the highest point in the Paramint Mountains bordering the valley, 3,367m high. 

The few blossoms, scattered as they seemed at first, nevertheless melded into a yellow carpet in the distance, and soon we found that the density of blooming plants increased considerably along the roadside. 

Yellow desert evening primroses, desert gold, desert yellow cup, blue phacelia, white desert chicory and, my favourite, desert star all contributed to this amazing tapestry, aided by sturdy creosote bushes with their shiny leaves. Stirred by the breeze they were in perpetual motion, and it wasn't easy to take close-up photos. Getting down on my knees for a closer look I almost knelt on a huge caterpillar and soon realized that the whole area was crawling with them: black, with yellow and white horizontal stripes, they were almost as long as my finger and had a small 'horn' at their back end. These were, as I since have found out, the caterpillars of the white striped sphinx moth, voracious in their appetite for the feast of flowers spread out for them by Mother Nature.

 

The visitor centre was very busy, probably even more than usual at this time of year because it was the weekend, and we didn't linger longer than necessary. The ranger Johann talked to suggested we might want to hike Golden Canyon, coming back via Gower Gulch, about four miles in length.

For old times sake we made a loop through Texas Spring campground where we had stayed the second night last year. Again I felt with a slight pang of regret how different it is to experience an area without camping right on site. Back on the road a sign warned of a road closure on Hwy.178 after about 40 miles. This meant we had to choose an alternate route out of the park, and we decided to forego the stop at Badwater Point because we'd have to turn around there, and it likely would be very crowded anyway. We'd take Hwy.190 east instead. 

The turnoff to Golden Canyon is only a few miles south of Furnace Creek. Last year we had hiked only partway in, somehow missing the turnoff to Red Cathedral with its imposing red rock walls. We hadn't pursued it then since we also wanted to see Natural Bridge canyon. 

This time we again didn't end at Red Cathedral and soon found the narrow trail winding its way up the dusty yellow flank of the mountain towards Gower Gulch. It was a steep climb for a while, but the views we had from the highest point were ample reward. The colours, from chalk white over palest yellow to dark red and brown were beautifully offset by the blue and white dappled sky.

 

Looking back at the trail we hiked up on. The two small dark dots on the right are people

 Coming down through almost mogul like little hills reminded me a bit of our hike in Bryce Canyon three years ago, although this gulch lacked the fairy-tale spires of that beautiful park.

Close to the bottom another trail branched off to the left to Zabriskie Point. Some hikers started there and ended at the Golden Canyon parking lot, but to do that one needed a second vehicle to transfer back to the point. 

The trail now descended slowly through narrowing canyon walls. A couple of short sections of sliprock didn't prove to be a problem, and after a little over three miles we arrived at the mouth of the canyon with a nice view of the valley below. 

The last mile or so dragged on a bit: the trail hugged the side of the mountain before ending at Golden Valley parking lot, where we had left our vehicle.

Our hope to reach Boulder City early was quickly dashed when traffic slowed down and soon came to a complete standstill before we were even close to the park border. A fatal traffic accident turned out to be the cause of this, and a long line of vehicles waited ahead of us already. It might be up to an hour and a half until we could move on, we were told, so we pulled out to the side and ate our lunch, sitting on some big rocks. It wasn't a bad place to wait at all, surrounded by wildflowers and rocky walls, but it made me sad to think that a holiday or weekend trip had gone so horribly wrong for a person or a family.

In the end traffic started to flow again much sooner than expected. Still, by the time we reached Boulder City and had found an acceptable motel (the same as last year in the end, after searching for an alternative for a while) it was too late to go looking for the herd of mountain sheep in Hemenway Park at the edge of town. Last year we had come there around sundown upon the recommendation of a sales clerk at the supermarket, but what was supposed to be a regular occurrence didn't happen that night: the sheep, coming down the mountain to feed on the lush green grass of the park, had stayed away that night, and now, too, we had missed the opportunity. We weren't too upset, however: it had been a long day, and the next day was going to be a highlight Johann and I had been looking forward to from the beginning. 

Where the locals go ... (Beatty, Nevada)

Huge, clean rooms awaited us at the Exchange Club Motel in Beatty. The neat elderly gentleman at the reception desk explained carefully about the heater (we all got an illustration with our keys, probably so that we didn’t need to bother anyone about it later) and, upon our question regarding a good place to eat, sent us to Denny’s. Really? Could a chain restaurant truly be the most recommendable in a town like this, when there was a place looking right out of the Wild West straight across the road from our motel?

‘Sourdough Saloon’ said the sign over the covered porch. No horses were tied up in front, but cars were parked along the road, and light shining from the windows invited us in. We peeked in: a saloon, alright, the bar packed, juke box playing oldies – no place to sit, it looked like. A door at the far end of the bar led into a second room, the restaurant part, obviously. Here, too, all tables were full, with a couple of people already standing in the corner, waiting their turn. Well, we’d wait, too, even if it meant curbing our appetite for a while longer, because this place had atmosphere, and the food, as Johann found out in a conversation with another customer at the counter, was supposed to be great. 

It didn’t take all that long until we had a table and the waitress placed a jug of beer in the middle. We ordered our pizzas, ignoring the day’s special, ribs, which seemed to be a favourite. It looked as if most of the other guests were locals: a bunch of guys celebrating someone’s birthday, two very proper looking elderly women digging into their food with gusto. A pool table gave Siegfried and Manfred opportunity to brush up on their skills while we waited for our orders and studied the decorations on the walls: hub caps, hood ornaments, even steering wheels from cars ranging from Chevrolets to BMWs. Hundreds of one dollar bills were tacked to the rough wooden walls, each signed, and in many cases with comments, by former customers as far away as Russia and England. I half expected someone pulling out a guitar singing country songs, but that didn’t happen. The men at the birthday table obviously had a good time, and the beer made them a bit more rambunctious as the evening progressed. One of the older ladies must have felt offended by the frequent use of expletives and called them to order, telling them to watch their language. It made me smile: I imagined that she had known these guys since they were little boys and felt she absolutely had the right to tell them off. 

The pizza was about the best one we had eaten on our trip, and the beer, cheaper than often, tasted good, too, at the end of a long day. Johann had not only gotten a positive review regarding the food from the woman he talked to, but also a recommendation where to go to see wildflowers. The evening was a great success all around – and we only had to walk a couple of minutes to get back to our motel.

Back to the desert: Death Valley

We left Bakersfield, a city with much industrial traffic, in the morning, on busy Hwy. 58. Soon the landscape changed; it became more and more arid, and cacti started to reappear. 

Turning northeastward on Hwy. 14 we soon were back in canyon country. We stopped briefly at the impressive rock wall at the entrance to Red Cliffs Natural Preserve, part of Red Rock Canyon State Park – another destination to mark down for possible future hiking. There are so many …

Around noon we entered Death Valley National Park, coming in from the west on Hwy. 190. Father Crowley Vista Point gave us a great view of the magnificent Panamint Range, but since it was a weekend and also spring break time there was too much traffic, the parking lot congested, and we didn’t linger: this was not a good spot to have lunch. Another half hour or so later, however, a picnic bench at Emigrant campground offered a good place to sit down for lunch and a rest. I remembered last year's first impression of Death Valley at about this point, when everything looked so bleak that we were almost ready to keep going and not stop. What a mistake that would have been! Knowing what expected us it felt much less desolate to me this time. 

Since we didn’t have a tent with us this time, and accommodation in Death Valley itself is not only hard to come by but also exceedingly expensive, we had booked a motel just outside the park in Beatty, NV. Free from the worry to have to look for a place to stay we could spend as much time in the park as we wanted. It gave us an opportunity to show our friends one of our favourite places from last year and do our much needed daily hike at the same time. 

Right above Stovepipe Wells campground a dusty, rocky one-and-a-half mile stretch of road turned off to the Mosaic Canyon trailhead. Here, too, were a lot more vehicles than the year before, but once we entered the canyon the crowds dispersed. Many just walk a short way in, following the rocky creek bed until the walls start to move closer together. Kids climbed on the rocks – it’s a paradise for young explorers, a great place to get acquainted with the joy of making it to the top of a rock without too big a danger. I was glad to watch parents stand back and let their children be a bit daring without interfering too much. How many kids have to miss out on that kind of thing nowadays because parents are too scared to let their children be as adventurous as a child should be. 

It was still early enough in the day for the sun to burn down on us, but once we had entered the narrower part of the canyon there was enough shade to keep us cool. Braver now than I had been at the start of last year’s hike I thought nothing of climbing up the short passages of slip rock that made progress more difficult at times. Part of our group decided to stop with about four hundred metres to go at a point that looked worse than the ones before, but three of us made it to the dry waterfall at the end. 

Here and there small plants had found a hint of moisture, sometimes in places where it seemed completely impossible, and even small evergreens clung to the rock part way up the wall. That is one of the most amazing things to me in this environment. 

By the time we left the canyon it was late afternoon, and the sun’s glare had softened, the sand and rocks basking in a warmer light. We stopped briefly along the road to get a look at the Mesquite Flat sand dunes and the weird stook-like bundles of vegetation aptly named ‘Devil’s Corn Field’ before continuing northeastward on Hwy.374 to Beatty.