Death Valley Deep Dive 2024

[Beardilocks]

You've posted some truly amazing stuff, but this one, in my unqualified opinion, takes the cake.  Never did I expect to see scenery and rock formations like this in Death Valley.  You nailed it, it’s like Utah (or some other far more distant corners of the world).

That flat tire reminds me of the time I experienced something very similar several hundred kilometers from civilization on the Gibb River Road (outback Australia).  I was looking for somewhere to pull off the "road" to make lunch, and after an hour, couldn't find anything, when I came upon a very rocky dry wash forking off.  I figured why not, and drove very slowly, but huge bushes closed in fast and I noticed they were full of huge spiders.  I noped out of there, and reversed back out.  Less than a quarter mile further up the road there was a nice, flat clearing and I pulled in.  As soon as I opened the door and got out, I heard the dreaded hissing sound.  Rear passenger tire was completely shredded.  My best guess was that stupid spider infested wash had a sharp rock.

Thanks!  It’s crazy unique area that I’ve always stared at and am slowly starting to obsess over.  Lol.  I guess if it took me 6yrs to actually start exploring it, that says something about how remote it seems to average hikers.  

And man, those spiders did in your tire.   Obviously they had shivs.  You barely escaped a Frodo-like situation of getting wrapped up.  Actually that happened to Bilbo & the dwarves too right?  Bloody Middle Earth spiders…. Obviously a few of those in Oz as well.

PS: I did call NPS and leave a message about the kids on Telescope. No one was picking up. Better safe than sorry.

[TacoLand]

GGrrreeeaaatttt stuff, thank you for posting! I've been buried in a new "project" and have been traveling a bunch (stay tuned for trip reports from Great Falls and NYC LoL) so haven't been responding to anyone's posts lately, but have been definitely living vicariously through them.

[Beardilocks]

I was looking for a place to escape the crowds on Easter Sunday but found myself in the main valley.  Not the best idea.  But I decided to check off an old set of pins on my list in what I'm calling Mini Artists Palette.  It a colorful area jutting out of the Black Mountains, South of Artists Drive and North of Natural Bridge.  I had explored Hellfire Canyon last year on the southern edge of this feature.  This time I headed around the northern end of hump to see if I could get into the interior. 

Gorgeous hike up the extremely flat fan for the first 1/2mi.  The non-stop stream of traffic behind me reminded me more of Yellowstone than Death Valley.  Especially the absolute MESS where everyone is parking on the road at the closed entrance to Devils Golf Course. 


Accidental pastels on Easter.  Amazing colors here just like Artists Palette in miniature. 





The first main side canyon is a beautiful (if impassable) purple dryfall.  This feature has always been visible to me from Badwater Rd and it was awesome to get up close to it. 


Second canyon is also gorgeous but features a series of dryfalls that looked unclimbable (bypass looks possible through).


Third canyon and the one I was heading up.  It looked like it had a couple of dryfalls further up on satellite, but I didn't know if they would be bad. 


I made it up this one even though the rock in this area is quite loose. 


Salt pan in my rear view.


The wash got a bit more… hectic. 


This looked like a huge dryfall on the satellite imagery.  But it was just an overhang. 


The wash got more chaotic as I got higher. 


This 15ft dryfall looked climbable, but it was garbage rock.  That special kind that will hold ½ of your body weight before it lets go.  Maybe I'm just getting fat.  I was about 1/3 of the way up and a foot hold let go on me.  My hand hold held however, just about yanking my shoulder out of socket.  So I decided for a bypass (behind me in this photo) where the rock was even worse but the exposure was less. 


Looking up canyon I decided not to try to drop back in.  There was very little canyon left before it hit the mountain and it was chock full of more dryfalls.  This eliminated my hopes of finding a bypass on the east side of the canyon to look for some ULPBs (ultra low probability bridges) in the next canyon east. 


I was definitely not complaining about my view for lunch from up here...





How freaking weird are the clouds here?  I'm not sure I've seen this before.  God's goggles. 


The lake was an absolutely gorgeous turquoise today until the wind picked up. 


I had a great view of…. this.  I've had my eyes on this on satellite for a couple of years now, but have never made it out to it.  This is a ways south of the parking lot for Devil's Golf Course.  There's a hint of a road heading out that way and I've wondered if it was the old parking lot for Devils Golf Course from many years ago.  I've also heard rumors of a geoglyph out in the salt pan somewhere, but this is not that.  Intruiging though.


Looking back towards the majestic 3730T.  And yes, most of the rest of my day was spent on scree in varying degrees of lubricity.  I think I fell about 5 or 6 times all told.  4 times WITH poles. 





Cool balancing rocks creating a weird gateway. 


The top of that purple fall. 


Looking south vaguely towards Hellfire Canyon. 











The top of this feature is criss-crossed with canyons, making navigation interesting.  But I was aiming for the Adventure Route out:  Heading for the blindingly bright off-whiteWest slope of this hump and hoping like hell I could find a way down the 1200ft from here to the valley floor. 


Over the first ridge between me and my house was a cute pair of mini-dry lakes. 


Looking back towards 3730T.


It was a an absolutely GORGEOUS day to be out here.  Between the amazing color of the lake and of the volcanic rocks in this area…  Damn. 


The splash of color from the flowers didn't hurt. 


A different kind of sailing stone here.  Lol.  This one was 3-4ft long. 


After several sketchy dryfall bypasses in the incredibly loose scree, this view was giving me palpitations.  Several of the bypasses should have been easy downclimbs but  the rock is absolute garbage.  One way or another I had a lot of elevation to scrub off. 


Somehow this was the end of my photos.  There were about 8 or 9 more dryfalls on the way down.  A large one in this off-white rock had to be bypassed with a butt-slide down some steep scree.  It would be rough going up it.  There were several tall ones in purple rock below this white section, but the rock was better there and they were downclimbed easily. 

Just below here I took my worst fall.  I went up a short ridge to see if I could get a look at up coming dryfalls.  On the top of the scree ridge I suddenly had my left foot shoot out on me, somewhere between Looney Tunes and David Lee Roth and landed on one butt cheek with my whole body weight.  On an oddly shaped pointy rock.  First time in my life I've landed on my butt hard enough to draw blood.  I definitely rolled around in the dirt for a solid minute cursing every God I could think of.  It wasn't a comfortable walk the rest of the way out, but it would have been a lot worse if I'd landed on my tailbone. 

Overall this is a really really cool, colorful, moderately challenging, fun area to explore.  With gorgeous views.  I would recommend gloves (forgot mine), poles, and possibly some of Kauri's patented scree-ice axes if you're planning on going up any of these scree slopes.

[GowerGulch42]

This is neat, there's all sorts of fun little canyons in that area.

When you were at Galena Canyon, did you note whether or not any of the mines were open?

[Beardilocks]

Several looked possibly accessible from the road but I didn’t get out to check any of them.

[MojaveGeek]

Well I'm slowly catching up here, after a week in SW Utah after my DV trip, a night out in Gold Butte, and a trip up to northern Maine to see the eclipse (awesome!). You've posted some great pix here and looks like great fun. That Utah-like area I would never have pegged for DV had someone shown me the pix. I now appreciate why you said you were off looking for a tire while I was in Utah

[Beardilocks]

This is a short trip that I took just before I left Death Valley this spring.  I have a few more trip reports to plug in here that I'm finally catching up on now that I'm back at base camp in the East. 

My reports were cut short because my folks showed up out West and visited Death VAlley for the first time and needed a tour guide. 

Due to the significance of Ubehebe Crater to the Native Americans of Death Valley and the many archeological sites in the area, I thought I would hike the ridges just to the south of the crater that form sort of the terminus of Cottonwood Mountain range and see if I could find anything there. 

It having been several years since I've stopped at the crater, I had forgotten what a stunning geological feature it is.  So I immediately proceeded to take no photos of it whatsoever. 

I did grab one of Little Hebe looking gorgeous. 


The flowers were out in force and looking magnificent, especially contrasting the black volcanic soil. 


A beautiful desolate area. 


The ridges themselves are made up of some kind of river deposit, with all the myriad stones rounded and smooth; an oddity in most of Death Valley.  I would be very curious to find out how & when this deposit was formed. 

In the end the only evidence of human activity I found on the ridgeline was several low walls that look like they could have been hunting blinds.  They're a bit too large and the wrong shape to be fallen mining cairns.  Not that this seems like a particularly good place to hunt.  But then I can't see back thousands of years either.  I lost my time travel binoculars. 





The views were certainly worth it though. 


And the view just past the crater was pretty decent as well. 

[Beardilocks]

I stopped at an old favorite site of mine that I had last visited several years ago.  Something had been bothering me.  This was an ancient habitation site that had several rock circle foundations, a metate & mano, some lithic scatter, and a couple of scattered petroglyphs.  Nearby there is also a stunning petroglyph collection placed oddly on a steep hillside. 

My conundrum lay in the WHY.  Why live here.  There are no springs anywhere nearby.  The location is tucked oddly into the landscape, almost hidden away.  It's not on any know travel routes in the area.  Obviously it's not always easy, thousands of years separated from the original inhabitants, to understand why they chose a particular place.  But this location was just ODD.  So I set out to explore the surrounding area to see if I could find any context clues. 

I was happy to see that my favorite piece at the site still sits undisturbed:  A metate with mano still placed on it, ready for use.  The petroglyph on the metate is just extra fabulous. 


One of the few scattered glyphs. 


There are several of these rock piles scattered around.  I can't quite glean their purpose. 


And then some lithic scatter.  And then more lithic scatter.  A LOT of pieces.  Too many pieces...


Suddenly it hit me.  The reason for the strange location of this mini-settlement:  It's a chert quarry!  Now it all makes sense.  You could see where the veins of chert had been dug from the ground and some very large pieces of lower quality ore had been left behind.  There are not too many known quarries within the boundaries of the park, so it's very cool to see.  And to solve this one little mystery. 


This may well be coincidence, but I found it odd.  As I was exploring around I found these three boulders, almost in a line, each with a smaller rock placed on top.  Just odd...


Some really pretty tiger-stripe chert. 


More of these odd rock piles. 


I visited a few old friends on the way out.  A map of two springs and a stream or a couple of praying mantises.  Mantisi? 








It was very cool to put a few puzzle pieces together and getting a bigger picture understanding of a site like this.  It's much easier to imagine life here when it was in use.  Many questions remain of course.  Did the same people that lived here and quarried stone for hunting also make the nearby petroglyphs?  Does one exist because the other did, or are they entirely unrelated? 

If you do manage to find this place, please leave it untouched.  It is both a sacred place and an open air museum that can only be original as it is now once.

[Beardilocks]

For what would turn out to be the final hike of my Death Valley season this year, we took a hike out to the far East edge of DV to hit Peak 5350T.  5350T is about 2.5mi SE of Chloride City on the edge of the National Park and has stunning views of the entire valley from it's summit. 

We parked at the National Park border and hiked in on the road from there, past several old prospecting camp dumpsites and quite a few forlorn prospects. 

We noticed this odd arch up the hill behind us on the way to the peak and decided to run the ridgeline in the way back to see it up close. 


I found this very odd pole on the side of the road.  It was 12-15ft long and definitely manmade.  I'm not sure what it's purpose may have been. 


The views from the summit did not disappoint, stretching from the salt pan/temporary lake to Furnace Creek, all the way down the valley to Mesquite Dunes and Stovepipe, even most of the way up Towne pass.  Incredible. 


Gratuitous second shot. 


A nice view of some of the old prospecting roads and adits in the area. 


Beautiful views SE into Nevada and the Amargosa Desert. 


Looking North.


The arch ended up being quite spectacular up close.  The hole in the center is about 4ft high and the total height was at least 10ft.  It's composed mostly of quartz, giving it a weird magic portal vibe. 


It's much taller from the downhill side.  Definitely one of the cooler natural features I found this year. 


A couple of horned lizards we almost stepped on.  Unlike their thin-tailed brethren that scurry & flash away as soon as they notice you, these more rotund cousins rarely seem to be bothered by our presence. 


This is the closest I've come to seeing a desert tortoise so far. 


On our walk down the ridgeline to check out the arch, we had been staring at a group of unusual rock outcroppings to the north.  The siren call of the unexplored.  I mused that they looked ripe for potential Native American habitation sites and we decided it was worth a second hike to check them out. 


It's a very unusual rock type for the area that has left some great features to explore. 





Some great wind-carved erosion making beautiful shapes and windows. 





Am I the only one that sees a lion? 


Bingpot!  Habitation site.  Once by Native Americans and now by one of the larger packrat middens I've seen.  Yikes. 


Mortero still in place.


This MASSIVE packrat midden was extra weird because this particular example of its species had collected a large amount of dried feces and animal bones to make it's home.  I'm not sure if that's really metal or just mental illness.  I'm pretty sure that's a rabbit's foot.  I did not take it for luck. 


Definitely not a bad place to hang out. 


Another mortero a few overhangs down. 


What an amazing way to wrap up the bulk of my Death Valley hiking for the '23/'24 season.  A gorgeous view of the whole valley, a giant magic quartz arch, and couple of random habitation sites.  But I now had to get ready to welcome my parents for their first ever visit to Death Valley.

[netllama]

Thanks for sharing yet another fantastic bit of unique exploration !