Gold Rush

One of the most accessible, and therefore busiest, places to hike is Golden Canyon. Combine that with a holiday weekend, and a free-entrance weekend, and the result is a packed trail.

I got to the trailhead at 7:30 one morning last weekend to find nine vehicles in the parking lot already. By the time I came out a couple of hours later, every spot was filled, the perimeter of the lot was solid with cars, and the road was lined in both directions.

When I saw a group hanging around their vehicles, suiting up as for a trek into the Outback, I threw on my backpack, slung the camera around my neck, and set out to get at least a couple of views without people... but just after the shot below, the camera began shutting off as soon as I pressed the shutter release. The malfunction was due to operator error and I spent a lot of time trying to get it to work. It wasn't until I was at the end of the canyon that I figured out the problem and was mad and frustrated all the way in. However, a good way to look at it is that I will never make that mistake again.

Red Cathedral is a formation at the far end of the canyon that's visible from the trail almost from the start. It's easy to understand how it earned its name. This was my destination.

The trail looks like it ends when it reaches Red Cathedral's base, but being willing to keep climbing an incline over rocky terrain, continuing to the right of the darker outcrop below...

yields this reward. The trail continued even higher but this was my limit. The gray formation in the distance is so pretty it deserves a closeup.

Its graceful, fluted curves are just lovely, don't you think?

I keep this photo even though I don't remember where it was on the trail, because it makes me look like a great adventurer, hiking to a drop off that requires rappelling to descend.

On the way out, I explored some side canyons. They are much narrower than others I've seen, and in some places the narrows allows only a one-person squeeze-through. This one needed a little ducking, a little sucking in of body parts, and confirmed my belief that I will never be a spelunker. I like elbow room.

Different views of Red Cathedral kept appearing.

A different side route took me to this car-sized boulder. The track continued through a crevice between the gray rocks on the left, which was wider than it looks here, and which doglegged quickly off to the left, so that I couldn't see...

this thirty-foot fall until I was on it. There are undoubtedly climbers for which this would be child's play, but I didn't even debate the issue. It was the end of the line for me.

One mesmerizing quality about Death Valley is its changeability. The weather, the time of day, or any variable imaginable, all contribute to the urge to explore, go, see, and do, yet never be bored. We can look at the Panamint Mountains across the salt flats a dozen times a day and never see the same shadows, the same hue, or the same detail in the fans. One afternoon I walked as the sun was low and watched the mountains behind the house light with a golden glow. Nothing different, right? than would be expected from late, slanting light. But what made this sight different, no - unique, was that among the peaks and valleys of those mountains, only the farthest peaks, but those peaks in their entirety, even down into the valleys in front of them, were lit, but not one bit of the peaks in front of them that were at the same level as the valleys and in some cases, even taller. It's hard to describe.

So this view down another canyon was a fun surprise, an arch formed of two kinds of rock. Anywhere else I would expect to see arches made of the same rock, but not Death Valley, where the unexpected is the norm. After all, who would expect the riches that are here for the looking in a place called Death Valley?

HH and I speculated about what this place would have been called if the '49ers hadn't gotten to it first. We, who are rarely without words, were practically speechless. Gold Valley? Borax Valley? Yikes. Now that we've been here, even this short time, our impressions of this vast, empty, indescribable place seem to conclude that there is no other name that so suits and yet is so unforgiving, as its current one.

Here's the story behind its name from the NPS website:

Death Valley was given its forbidding name by a group of pioneers lost here in the winter of 1849-1850. Even though, as far as we know, only one of the group died here, they all assumed that this valley would be their grave. They were rescued by two of their young men, William Lewis Manly and John Rogers, who had learned to be scouts. As the party climbed out of the valley over the Panamint Mountains, one of the men turned, looked back, and said "goodbye, Death Valley." This name, and the story of The Lost '49ers have become part of our western history.

On my way out, I passed about twenty people heading in, all in one group (including a guy who was barefoot, for heaven's sake). That's not fun to me. To me, the fun lies in quietude, a sense of discovery, a feeling that I am the first one there. There's a young seasonal employee here who's working on his Ph.D., his thesis on wilderness in our national parks. He came over a couple of nights ago and we talked about that. What does wilderness mean? How do we define it? Does it have the same definition wherever we find it? If we had a chance to hike in an old-growth forest or an old second-growth forest, which would we choose? Would we be more excited to be in a place where there's the appearance that no one has been there before? There are no right or wrong answers.

 I know that nowhere I ever go will be in unexplored land, but my imagination and my heart are fueled by the magic of not only seeing no one, but also not seeing the evidence of anyone: no bootprints, no trash, no overturned rocks, no cairns, no packed trail through a canyon. I had never thought about it enough to put words to it but now that I have, it will be a compelling pursuit to seek those places that fuel me like they do.
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Thought of the day:

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.  -  Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac with Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

Show time!

 [Edited 2015-02-13]

It's been uncommonly warm here, and combined with the rain we recently had - a soaking kind I call Seattle rain, what the Navajo call a female rain, the flowers are beginning to bloom. These confections of perfection are common according to a guide I have, but to me they are uncommonly spectacular.

The first blooms I spotted were brown-eyed evening primrose, Camissonia claviformis. The blossom is no bigger than a half-inch across.

You can see where the brown-eye part of the name comes from. These are the most plentiful of any I've seen.

Golden evening-primrose, Camissonia brevipes. I saw a couple yesterday and many more today. A tiny pollinator is already at work (at 3 o'clock).

This lesser mojavea, Mohavea breviflora, was just a couple of inches tall. There were only a few in bloom today.

I almost missed this scented cryptantha, Cryptantha utahensis. It's a spreading, mounding plant only a couple of inches tall. The blossoms are about 1/32 of an inch across.

Yesterday there were only buds of desert gold, Geraea canescens; today there were two or three blooms. The brochure says the desert sunflowers form golden fields. The dark specks look like they're marks on the flower, but instead are insects.

Three stages of the notch-leaf phacelia, Phacelia crenulata, are on this specimen. More tiny flowers, again no more than a half-inch across. This is a look-but-don't-touch plant; contact with this tiny beauty can cause skin irritation.

I have no idea what this one is yet. The rosette leaves don't appear in my guide, so I have to wait for the flower to appear.

Finally, bees were ecstatically moving from flower to flower. Spring has arrived in the Valley.

On the way back home after all these discoveries, I heard coyotes yipping and calling nearby and got the camera ready. This lone critter was the only one to make an appearance and was so neatly camouflaged that I saw him only as an irregularity on the curve of the ridge. A bat, no bigger than my palm, flitted and swooped around me, pivoting mid-air on the point of a wing, while I watched the coyote watching me. As I walked the final distance to my house, to my HH, an unbidden thought traveled at the speed of light from my heart to my consciousness: I love my life!

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Thought of the day:

The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. - Oprah Winfrey

Ash Meadows

When HH and I got close to Death Valley on our way from southern Arizona, the GPS kept telling us to turn in at the road leading to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, miles away from the Valley. It was one of those GPS things that makes no sense, so rather than emulating the Japanese tourists who blindly followed their GPS's directions straight into the ocean, we followed the directions that were painted on brown steel and pounded into the earth. What we didn't find out until later was the GPS was actually correct. Boy, were we sorry for saying bad things about the Garmin.

A researcher in the archives who was interested in pupfish told me about this place. We pass it every time we go from the park to Pahrump (I'm not making that up), Nevada, but it looked like a whole lotta nothin' out there, and kept passing it by. The researcher said it's a wonderful place, so off we went this weekend. He was absolutely right.

The Visitor Center is brand new, open only a month and with exhibits still under construction. No photos of it, but one of the signs outside it spoke about the native people of the area. Ash Meadows is the ancestral land of the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) and Newe (Western Shohone) who consider the spiral formations to represent the rattlesnake who commands respect and watches over the land. The formation below was cited as a representation of the snake.

Behind the visitor center is a one-mile-long boardwalk that leads to Crystal Reservoir and Lower Crystal Marsh, where a small population of Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish lives. Pupfish were named for behavior that appeared as playful as puppies. The behavior, attributed to the males, is related to breeding. Need I say more?

One species can live in as little as one inch of water. Other species tolerate salinity three times greater than the ocean, and another has adapted to water temperature as warm as 110° F. Several species of pupfish are on the Endangered Species list.

In the 1980s a developer saw $$$ in the desert where Ash Meadows now is, and made plans to build 20,000 homes, shopping malls, and other accoutrements of civilization that would have eliminated the habitat of every living creature there, including at least 24 species of plants and animals that live nowhere else on earth. In fact, Ash Meadows has the highest concentration of indigenous life found only in one location than any other local area in the United States and the second greatest in all of North America. Of course there was huge controversy, complete with competing bumper stickers of Kill the Pupfish! and Save the Pupfish! 

In 1983 The Nature Conservancy purchased the 13,000 plus acres, saving 12 major spring systems whose 10,000–year-old “fossil waters” feed numerous pools and riparian systems. Most of the water comes from rain and snowmelt from the Spring Mountains of southern Nevada, taking thousands of years to trickle down the cracks and seep its way into the aquifer. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, custodians of this now-23,000 acre property, is in constant activity to remove exotic plants and animals that divert resources from native species, and to repair the damage that was done by decades of farming. It took the Supreme Court to halt pumping of the aquifers that threatened the tiny habitat of the pupfish.

The turquoise color, even more vibrant in person, is due to being filtered through limestone.

In the only photo of the 2-inch pupfish that remotely turned out, two green females are camouflaged by rippling water. Males are bright, electric blue. I saw many but none stayed still long enough to photograph.

 In stark contrast to the apparent desolation of the Mojave Desert...

is the appearance of oases, described as being like "charms on a bracelet" that appear when the underground Amargosa River breaks the surface. They're breathtaking and unexpected.

We made our way to Devil's Hole, the only place the Devil's Hole pupfish live, and the place the GPS tried to send us on our way to the Valley - because Devil's Hole is actually Death Valley property, wholly surrounded by Ash Meadows NWR.

The iridescent blue inch-long fish's only natural habitat is in the 93 degree waters of Devil's Hole. According to a Fish and Wildlife website, a count of the fish in April 2013 estimated 35 Devils Hole pupfish remained in their natural habitat.  A September count estimated 65 fish. When population counts began in 1972, pupfish numbered around 550 individuals.

Devils Hole pupfish is one of the world’s rarest fishes, spending most of its life in the top 80 feet of the 93° waters of a cavern in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Its habitat is one of the smallest natural ranges known for any vertebrate. The surface water is only about 3x5 feet, but is at least 500 feet deep.

I thought I'd be able to see the fish but this is what greets the visitor.

The cage continues to a platform that is also entirely enclosed, and all that's visible is the small surface area of the water at the mouth of the cave. There isn't anything to see. The fish and their habitat are being protected and that's a good thing.

Finally, I give you this lovely sight, turquoise water vivid against the sober browns and gray-greens of the desert; imagine the 49ers, not believing their eyes. It was no less welcome a sight to me.

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Thought of the day:

Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be. - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Fall Canyon

When we arrived in mid-December we were met by friends and fellow volunteers from Petrified Forest. They'd been here about six weeks by then, and they told me my next-trailer neighbor was a hiker and was looking forward to having someone to hike with. Deb was gone, home to Baltimore for Christmas, and I didn't meet her for a few weeks. When she returned she asked if I'd like to go to Fall Canyon with her, and one pretty day we set out. It was the first canyon I explored.

Let me just say this: the woman is a hiking fiend. Thank goodness she's a birder because once she gets moving the sight or sound of a bird is about all that will slow her down. This summer she's heading to the Alps. I pity the friend who's going with her because I can't imagine keeping up with her at altitude; sea level is hard enough.

After a tiring distance across th inevitable uphill - always uphill - alluvial fan, we finally arrived at the canyon's first narrows.

There is the evil woman who tortures me. I like her.

Have you ever seen rock that bends into distinct curves? It's such a graceful sight that belies the name given it: tortured rock.

Another narrows. They're interesting not only for their unique features but for the mystery of what lies around the corner. Some walls are rough and uneven, some are polished smooth and almost glossy. A couple of weekends ago Deb and another friend and I camped for a night at Marble Canyon, where we found narrows walls as coarse as a grater, and a couple of feet lower on the same wall, it was worn smooth by flood waters surging through over the decades. Interesting stuff. 

Yet another narrows. Loose, deep gravel makes this a moderately strenuous hike but also encourages a slower pace.  If you hurry through, what's the point of being there? Even Deb slows for this.

Some say this is one of the more beautiful canyons in Death Valley. The changing colors and textures make each one unique, that's for sure. I haven't been to more than a few but I can easily see why this one would make such a list.

Our hike ended at this dry fall of 18 feet, and no scalable route over it without climbing gear. Before we got here I bought a copy of Hiking Death Valley by Michel Diconnet and later found out it's considered the bible of exploring the Valley. The author describes the routes, of course, but also tells of the geology, history, flora, and fauna that might be encountered. He says there's a route around the fall but we didn't look for it, and this was our turnaround point. Because the canyon is easy to get to I hope I can hike it again and find my way to its upper reaches.

The total route was about seven miles and I felt every one of them, which leads me to ask, Why don't I have a jacuzzi in the house? Somebody needs to remedy that.

The walls of Fall Canyon's narrows are hundreds of feet high in places, which makes it different from others that don't have the dramatic enclosed feeling.

I am awaiting wildflowers with bated breath. We've had rain several times, a good amount last week, and I have my fingers crossed for an abundant crop. There are a dozen or so wildflowers known as Class I Endemics; they grow only within the confines of the park. More than two dozen are Class II; the majority of their range is within the park. This, of course, is some of last year's crop, but this year's should start blooming at the lower elevations on the darned alluvial fans within the next few weeks, and out I will go again. I can't get enough of this paradise.

For a very different view of Death Valley, read Death Valley in '49 by William Manley. I found it as a free download on Amazon.

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Thought of the day:

In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock. - Edward Abbey

Dante's View

Dante's View is named for the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, who described 9 circles of the Inferno, 7 terraces of Mount Purgatory, and 9 celestial bodies of Paradiso.

In April 1926, some businessmen of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, informed of the touristic attractiveness of Death Valley, were trying to pick the best view of Death Valley. They had nearly chosen Chloride Cliff in the Funeral Mountains north of here when they learned of this place in the Black Mountains. Upon seeing it the group was immediately persuaded and promptly called this point Dante's View.

Exactly which vision of the afterlife was in the minds of the namers of Dante's View is unknown. I can understand it being any of the three: the Valley's Inferno in mid-summer; Purgatory if one comes on foot up the long, winding road with a 15° grade, or Paradiso, for the sublime view.

See what I mean? This has to be the best view of the Valley from anywhere in the park. It's not what I expected a place called Death Valley to look like.

A different view of the salt flats, this elevation shows the patterns of wet and dry.

I looked at this view and looked again. What is that line? Is there a pipeline on the Valley floor? No. Can't be. Then I saw a speck moving along it and realized it's the Badwater Road, the one my boss drove along when he took us to the lowest point in North America.

To the south lie the Owlshead Mountains. The path to the brink is up hill and down dale, looking much steeper than it actually is.

 

An alluvial fan looks so very different from up top.

This is the road we returned on from the date ranch. I'd never have guessed how different it would be from a mile in the air. I also would never have guessed that my vocabulary would prove to be so inadequate, that I just would not have the words to do justice to these views.

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Thought of the day:

At this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe. - Dante Alighieri

Not that kind of a date ranch

A few weeks ago HH and I drove a couple of hours to visit a date ranch in Tecopa, California. When I told a friend we had gone, and explained what it was (we are close to Nevada, after all) she seemed just a little disappointed that our destination was so tame. Sigh. The trials of being an adventurer, always having to live up to my wild reputation.

The way into the ranch regressed from a highway to a paved secondary road, to a gravel road, to a dirt track barely one and a half lanes wide, and wound itself down into a canyon with a forty-foot sight line until the next hairpin turn. We wondered what we were getting ourselves into.

Then this view opened in front of us: an oasis in the desert.

This was a brand new experience for me. There are acres of date palms of a couple dozen varieties. The small gift shop has tasting bins of each kind they have for sale and no one was keeping track of how many samples I tried. 

They also sell date shakes. As cold as it was that day, there was no way we were leaving without slurping one down.  A gigantic date cookie somehow made it into our sack; I'm not the one who added it to the pile of goodies we accumulated on the checkout counter.

As the dates ripen on the trees, cloth bags are tied over each cluster to keep the birds off. Imagine this on a moonlit night.

Each variety has a sign like this one. I liked having the information. Did you know that all date palms are the same genus and species, Phoenix Dactyliferia? Did you know that dates produced this kind of yield? Some varieties have more, some have less. Some have a short shelf life because they are very large with a high sugar content, and so ferment easily. I wonder if there's a date wine.

The ranch also grows hybrids that they've developed themselves.

We wandered the orchard, never predicting or even guessing that different colors like these existed in unripe fruit.

These are the oldest trees there, planted around 1920 with seeds from a mail order catalog. About half are males, producing only pollen - each male having enough for several dozen female trees. The females produce more than 10 different types of dates which they collectively call the China Ranch Hybrids.

Here's the last of the season for this cluster.

On our way back home through the park we stopped to watch a pair of coyotes. One trotted off among the brush but the other stayed near the road, watchful. We often hear them at night, yipping outside the house, very close.

It was a fun trip. Our return took us through the southern part of Death Valley, along Badwater Road, with more of the indescribable beauty that is the soul of this place.


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Thought of the day:

Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Coyote. Wile E. Coyote, genius.- Wile E. Coyote, To Hare is Human, 1956