Death Valley
Inyo County, California
Jim Drysdale

A much-anticipated lengthy outing was just the ticket this last (holiday) weekend. The weather was giving me the green light to let rip on digital and Hasselblad camera equipment - in attempts to capture my quirky obsession (i.e., photograph weird elements including inclement weather, lots of rocks, jacked-up fault block ranges, etc.). The only problem was I would have to take the loooong way to the park. Snowstorm up Donner Pass in the Sierra was a virtual lock-in, thus demanding usage of chains, thus slowing me to a crawl

So instead I headed way far - too far south -- in order to bypass the main chunkiest part of the Sierra. End result; front door to Mesquite Springs Campground in northern DVNP, 9-1/5 hrs! I actually did arrive within the park much earlier, but was compelled to bypass the gathering RV-ers. In this case the masses were there in celebration of the robust history of the 49-ers (not the football team mind you, wouldn’t be caught dead). And so the people staged a multi-day festival in honor of these tough-ass miners, about the time I pulled in.

As it turned out the festivities, which included cowboy poets, western art show, chuck wagon cooking and fiddlers on-stage, were a nice divergence when I wanted to come up for air.

For air you say?

Well to me at least, the land itself out there is this sort of vast, surreal, destitute and abused (geologically speaking) mass of earth bones that has its way in overwhelming starkness. Basically, this is some big imposing country with stuff around every corner (if you can find one) and that’s not to say it is bad. By no means. Its just that one needs to gear down in order to enjoy this form of self-isolation; perhaps learn to meditate, or at the least make sure you got the creative juices goin in some way or another. Think Sergio Leone movies with dead stillness and you get the picture.

Anyway, I guess you can say this is one of the freakier places in the Great Basin.

Badwater from afar

Crankshaft Corner

The ever-popular Zibriskie Point.

Dantes’ View

A monstrous expanse can be absorbed here at Dantes View. Here you’re looking diagonally across Death Valley itself, at the Panamint Range (northern end). The Panamints represent the 3rd highest vertical relief in the lower 48. This is a classic example of plate tectonics gone mad (stark-raving mad I say!). Here the valley floor, which gradually bottoms out at 282-ft below sea level, gives rise to 11,049 ft Telescope Peak. That’s over two miles straight up in roughly five miles horizontal distance. There are very few places in the world such as this.

Telescope Peak. Storm brewin’ up there!

Ubehebe Crater

The last part of my trip was spent on the northern side of DVNP. Here we’re gazing across the Ubehebe Crater, which was fairly close to camp. This is remnant recent (i.e., less than 3000 yrs) gaseous volcanism. Nothing huge, but a pretty impressive splurp of steam nonetheless.

Eureka Dunes

Finally there was the Eureka Dunes side trip. At nearly 700 ft in height these are the biggest dunes California has to offer (about 100 ft lower than those at Colorado Sand Dunes NP). Here the dunes slam up against the Last Chance Range (I love these names!) in an environment where energy dissipates beyond a funneling point, thereby allowing the wind to deposit its load of lakebed-derived sand. What impressed me here was just how much fun it still is to play in the sand.

Last Chance Range near Eureka Dunes. Note the colors. This turned out fuzzy but was a distant zoom shot. Many of the numerous ranges show this sort of impressive coloration within their stratified rock units. Note the alluvial fan at the base. This is the best I can do for scale here. It’s pretty massive; several thousands of feet in relief miles away.

Trip home was along the same 9-1/2 hr route in. But instead it was brutally punctuated by a rampant on-slaught of the stomach flu (which will mandate this story to a timely end).

 

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