Winter In Death Valley

 

The winter season is high season for Death Valley.  Temperatures are comfortable, great in fact for vigorous hiking.  The park is at peak attendance and the campground is sold out almost every night.  We are wearing jackets and light gloves when doing our 7:00am rounds.  But when the sun gets above the ridgeline of the Funeral Mountains it warms quickly to very comfortable temperatures.

Cyndee and I have done a number of scenic drives together.  Her knees just won't let her do much walking on uneven ground.  She's averaging about 4 miles a day doing rounds in the campground but thankfully that is on dead flat surfaces.  My daily step count runs a little higher as I take on extra assignments and do camper assist requests (help change flat tires, jump dead batteries, pound in tent stakes in concrete-hard desert crust, etc).

One day in December was a particularly busy day.
Most days are just 6 or 7 miles.

After our son took me on a couple of hikes on our days off and I had built up a little walking stamina I ventured out on some solo hikes.  One in particular was a hike to Natural Bridge.

Self Portrait
Trailhead to Natural Bridge.

Natural Bridge.
70 feet tall, 35 feet thick.

Giant Pour-Off

It doesn't look like it in the little picture above but that is a very large pour-off (a place where water vigorously runs off the top of a cliff during a rain event).  It's very tall, at least 150'.  It is carved out like a half-pipe and polished smooth by flowing water.  It took a long time to form, 100's of thousands of years, possibly millions of years.

A favorite drive for Cyndee and I was to the highest drivable point in the park, Dante's View.  At 5,475 feet you can get a good look up and down the valley, almost all 120 miles of it.

From Dante's View looking north up the valley.

From atop Dante's View (5,475 feet) looking down to Badwater Basin (-282 feet).
That thin, dark semicircle is Badwater Road.

In late February my brother and sister-in-law came from Texas to visit us and take in the park.  It was a full day that stretched into a little dark sky stargazing.

Walking among the salt pans in Badwater Basin

Atop Zabriske Point

Dante's View

20 Mule Team Canyon

Mesquite Dunes

We covered a good deal of the high points of the park putting about 100 miles on the truck doing it.  Lunch was at the resort in Stovepipe Wells and supper at The Ranch's Ice Cream Parlor (which has a good cheeseburger in addition to excellent ice cream).  Our little stargazing party worked out well as it was a moonless night.  Constellations, planets and the Milky Way were prominent.

As much as there is to do in Death Valley, Cyndee and I did some day trips outside the park.  One trip was to China Ranch, a date farm in a canyon near Shone, CA.

Our trip to China Ranch began with a one hour drive of the full length of Badwater Road.

We were a little dubious when the entrance to the ranch was a steep grade dirt road lined with hand-dug mines on each side.

The ranch store was of modest appearance but the inside was packed full of Native American articles, baskets, rugs, and curios of polished rocks, agates and such.  Of course there was a fantastic variety of dates too.

The ranch put a little of their history on display.

Cyndee exiting the ranch store with our bag full of dates.
It seemed like we had bought quite a few but they were gone in just a couple days.

While most things in Death Valley are larger than life there are a few things that are smaller in scale.  Case in point, Mushroom Rock.  It's just one rock among millions.  Too big to pick up but diminutive among giants.

Mushroom Rock

Hard, hard volcanic rock.  Carved and polished by millions of years of wind and water.  Not long ago this rock looked more like its namesake.  The story goes that a troop of boy scouts were climbing on the rock to take a group picture and the weight of the boys broke the "cap" off the mushroom.

Meanwhile back in camp, it was late in coming but near the end of January we finally got some snow on the highest peaks to our west.

Panamint Mountains with a light covering of snow on the highest peaks.

With snow showing on the peaks of the Panamints we thought we should hustle and get up to Emigrant Pass and out to the charcoal kilns.  These kilns are on the backside of the mountains in the above picture.

A quick stop at the beginning of the Emigrant Pass to look back on the valley below.

About an hour later we arrived at the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns. Built in 1877 they looked new.

Cyndee about to enter one of the kilns for a closer look.

Wildrose Charcoal Kilns

There were patches of snow in shady spots.  The road that continued from here to the trailhead (14 miles, one way) to Telescope Peak (highest point in Death Valley at 11,043 feet) was closed for the season.

Speaking of weather, on Valentines Day at 5:30 in the evening we had a giant storm cloud erupt over the east side of the Black and Funeral Mountains, the range that borders the east side of Death Valley.

This storm evolved quickly.  When we were making our daily trek to the gatehouse to get our overnight paperwork there were just some fair weather clouds to the southeast.  When we came out only minutes later those fair weather clouds had ballooned into a supercell.

First snapshot at 4:34pm. 
Sun was just above the Panamints to the west.

Second shot at 5:17pm. 
Sun had dipped below the ridgeline of the Panamints.

Third shot at 5:24pm
This storm was getting really angry.  Glad it was on the other side of the mountains

Fourth shot, 5:30pm
Total collapse!
It seems the whole cloud turned into hail and fell to the ground.

Luckily the area where the hail fell was an extremely sparsely populated valley.  No reports of damage.

How about a little campground silliness?  We had a gentleman drive his class-C motor home with a loaded motorcycle trailer hitched on into the campground.  For unknown reasons, even to himself, he drove up to his campsite but then turned the opposite direction he should have.  This maneuver put him on the street directly in front of our camp host site.  When he realized what he was doing he made a snap decision to just do a U-turn, right off the pavement and straight into quicksand-soft desert.  The motorhome instantly sank to its frame.

We were off duty and in our camper.  Cyndee being ever vigilante, and having far better hearing than me, got up to see what the commotion was about.  I didn't hear the words she said but I did catch the tone.  I knew I was in for some work.

First order of business was to assess the situation:  Situation bad.

Next order of business, radio law enforcement and inform them of the situation:  "Class C camper 'environmentally detained' (I'm serious, that's what they call being stuck in the sand), Furnace Creek Campground in front of Camp Host site 2.  Traffic partially blocked.

Law enforcement replied that they would respond as would Rescue 1.

While waiting for the LE and Rescue 1 to arrive we started getting the motorcycle trailer loose from the motorhome.  It took about five of us old people to horse the trailer around and get it off the road.

Rescue 1 brought a shovel and sand boards with him.  We dug and dug for almost an hour trying to get the sand boards under the rear wheels to no avail.  The LE had already started telling the driver of the camper that he was going to have to call for a tow.  However the message was not getting through, he was still thinking he could drive it out.  Sadly, this fellow seemed to be at a level of cognitive impairment that should have had him hanging up the keys some time ago.

In the meantime time I had been letting the LE know that I had a truck that could pull him out.  Three times I offered and three times I was waived off.  Then came the message from the tow company that it would be hours before they could come and would require payment in advance of $1,500.  So for the fourth time I offered and this time the LE rolled his eyes and said; "Sure, go ahead".

The volunteer supervisor makes me park Chief, my truck, in a common area so as not to have too many vehicles at our campsite.  So I took off to get Chief and came idling back to the scene of environmental detention.  As I rolled up the LE exclaimed; "Holy cow!  You've got a TRUCK!  I thought you were going to come back with a Tacoma or something."  Then I nodded towards my rig and said you think I pull that behemoth with a Toyota?

For those not versed in truck.  A Toyota Tacoma is what is classically called a half-ton truck, referring to its payload capacity. My truck, Chief, is a 5 ton truck.  It has a curb weight of 11,000 lbs, nearly double that of the Tacoma.

Anyway, Chad, our son, and I got busy rigging up for the tow.  Unbeknownst to me, I was told later, we were beginning to draw a crowd of onlookers.  Normally we watch camp TV but this afternoon we were the camp TV program

.

Chad making final rigging check as I take up slack in the tow rope.

Rigging secure and double-checked I dropped the transmission into 4-wheel, low range and started putting a load on the nylon tow rope.  Unloaded the rope is 2 inches in diameter, today's strain has stretched it down to barely an inch.

Slow and steady ruled the day.  I slowly upped the power, never spinning a wheel, and the class-C began to slide on its frame until the rear wheels made contact with the shoulder of the road and began lifting the camper off its frame and onto its wheels.  Again, unbeknownst to me, I was later told that a round of applause had broken out of the now sizeable crowd of onlookers.

As Chad and I were breaking down the rigging and stowing it, you can see the LE near the driver's side window of the class-C giving him very strict instructions on how to steer.  All in all we were very fortunate with this little episode.  The entire day leading up to the wayward camper the wind had been howling and the dust was so thick you couldn't see ten feet.  But moments before the camper left the pavement the wind had all but stopped.  And as you can see in the picture above it was about to get dark.  The shadow had crept well up the mountain in the background.  It would be wicked dark in just a few more minutes.

Long post, I know.  I'll stop now.