Death Valley National Park (California)

On August 22nd, a powerful thunderstorm swept through Death Valley National Park. The valley, which normally receives little rain during the summer months, was inundated in a matter of hours with the amount of water it normally receives in three months. The result was severe flash flooding. The national park, which normally has very good infrastructure, was completely devastated. Every major paved road in the park was at least partially washed away, not to mention the dirt roads. Death Valley was closed to the public for three months after that disastrous day. The park reopened on October 15th. The main road, CA 190, was largely repaired and some of the most popular tourist destinations, such as Badwater Basin, Devil's Golf Course and the Artists Palette, were reconnected to the park's transportation system.

For a long time it wasn't clear whether we would be able to get into Death Valley on this trip. We had really hoped it would be open, as we were more than delighted by the vast and sparsely vegetated desert when we passed through two years ago. We originally had big plans for Death Valley on this trip, including several hikes and visits to some of the more remote places the valley has to offer. However, with the news of the hurricane, we were hoping to get into the park at all.

We were lucky. It reopened just over two weeks before we arrived at the Nevada/California border.

We missed the sunset at Zabriskie Point by 20 minutes, but this time we didn't have to drive through the park in the dark like in 2021. Instead we drove to the nearby Texas Spring Campground, set up camp and had dinner.
Due to the severe access restrictions we had to cancel some of our plans. But there was still more than enough to do for one day! First we drove to Badwater Basin, the deepest point in the USA at an impressive 282 feet (85 metres) below sea level. Normally this place is very dry and completely covered with a crystallised salt crust. But not this time! The hurricane left the Badwater Basin as a large lake, which is very rare in one of the driest and hottest areas on earth. It was an impressive sight and we could only imagine how crazy this place must have looked after the hurricane.

Next we visited Devil's Golf Course, a lifeless area north of the Badwater Basin made up of small, sharp and solid towers of sand and salt. It really is a place where you would struggle to find anything alive except tourists.

Further north we saw the Artists Palette, a colourful range of mountains that get their colour from different minerals that occur very close together.

With two hours before dark we decided to leave the park and head back to Nevada to visit Rhyolite, a ghost town that was once a thriving gold mining town with over 5000 permanent residents in the early 19th century before the gold mines' output began to decline. Some of the ruins are in surprisingly good condition, while others consist only of the main beams or individual walls. We wandered around the town until just after sunset before heading back to Death Valley.
We spent the night at Stovepipe Wells Campground in the middle of the valley.

The next morning we got up early, drove a few miles east, made some coffee and went to the Mesquite Sand Dunes to watch the sunrise. The dunes were beautiful and a very different kind of desert to the places we had seen in the valley. In the valleys between the dunes clay has been deposited from an ancient lake bed. Every time it gets wet it washes up and covers the sand. As it dries it hardens and forms a crust that covers the entire surface of the ground. The sun dries the surface very quickly while the underside of the crust is still moist. This causes the entire crust to crack and splinter, leaving behind beautifully patterned panels of clay that slowly erode and turn back into sand.

Although we had to scale back our original plans for Death Valley, we had a fantastic time here. We even had the gift of seeing a huge ephemeral lake in this otherwise super dry desert, an event that only happens every 15 to 20 years. We couldn't have been luckier! Czytaj więcej