The name, you think when you first lay eyes upon the place, says it all. The wide, shimmering flat that is streaked with white that you know without being told is salt. The hard, angular mountains with no sign of vegetation growing on their slopes. The washed out colors—reds, browns, copper. The absence of sound even though it seems there should be some air moving.
Death Valley, indeed.
It is stark and desolate, just like you would expect. But it doesn’t take long for the senses—especially one’s sight—to adapt and to begin to see, and appreciate, the formidable beauty of this place. And only a little longer than that, you find yourself taken by the austere beauty and thinking you’d like to stay a while. Get off the road and go into the back country. The landscape has not changed or become more inviting. But you begin to feel something for its majesty.
Death Valley is the largest national park in the lower 48. Over three million acres. It was brought into the system as a “monument” in 1933 before it was upgraded to “park” status 60 years later. Perhaps because it was felt that a desert didn’t really deserve to be called a park. Deserts were wastelands, unlike the more verdant lands to the north, like Yellowstone, that were designated parks.
But if the point of the park system is to preserve unique ecosystems and habitats, then Death Valley undeniably belongs, as even the most dubious visitor begins to agree after a few miles on the road from Furnace Creek to Stovepipe Wells. (If there were nothing else to recommend it, Death Valley owns some exquisite placenames.)
A few miles south of Furnace Creek, there is a place called Badwater, the site of the lowest elevation in North America: 282 feet below sea level. This section of the park is a wonder of geology where you can marvel at what time, wind, sand, and water can do to rock, creating a field of formations so wicked and forbidding that, as someone once said, “only the devil could play golf on such rough links.”
Also in this section of the park, one can marvel at the various colors and hues in the rock of a segment called Artist’s Palette. Take in what is called Dante’s View, which is among the park’s most magnificent vistas. From this point, you can look across the lowest elevation in the park and beyond, to the highest—Telescope Peak, at slightly better than 11,000 feet and capped with snow in the winter. The juxtaposition might, literally, take your breath away.
The road north to Stovepipe Wells skirts a valley that was once a lake and still holds water in spots and in amounts that vary with the season. But it is, mostly, a vast salt flat. Which brings us to the Salt Creek turnoff. This takes you to a parking area and walking path along an intermittent little stream that seems improbable here in the desert. But not so much as the little pupfish that live here and nowhere else, having adapted like the other creatures native to this tough environment. On the roadside, depending on the season, you might see some blooming brittle bush flowers. They are a sort of yellow in color and look oddly gay out here in the desert.
From here, on to Stovepipe, the road runs by a spot where arrowweed plants grow with the roots exposed in a way that suggests cornstalks and, thus, the name “devil’s cornfield.” Also along this stretch, there are the mesquite dunes, where the wind has mounded sand that is mostly bare and lifeless except for the occasional track of a coyote.
There are pullouts and paths along this route, which make the park and its marvels accessible and easy to view. But after a while, one feels like getting off the road and back into the country. Deep enough, at least, to get away from traffic noise. Though, in truth, the roads are not heavily traveled.
There are many tracks suitable for four-wheel drive and trails for hiking, and it is possible to get deep into the park. But this is something that shouldn’t be done without a little planning and preparation, even if you are just going in a little ways on foot.
If it didn’t already have a reputation for being hostile to human habitation, the park is one of the few areas left in North America where GPS is unreliable and cell service more or less nonexistent. Furthermore, it is a desert, and you need to dress and pack accordingly. Take in plenty of water. But if you do want to get off the highway and you are prepared, the experience can be unique and sublime.
Just beyond Stovepipe, there is a rough road that leads up into what is called Mosaic Canyon. It is slow-going in a sedan but can be done. After a couple of miles, you will come to a parking area where you can leave your vehicle and start along a trail that leads through a cleft in the giant wall of rock.
It turns cool and shady once you are inside. And hauntingly quiet. You can hear your own breathing and, possibly, your pulse if your heart is running fast from the walk. The trail meanders in places, narrow enough to feel like a hallway, with formidable walls of rock on either side. There is almost nothing but rock. Only the occasional and opportunistic creosote bush growing out of a crevice where something like soil has collected.
A couple of hundred yards in, you come to a place where you need to scramble up a low face of the rock. You’ll put your hands and feet on the rock but nothing sticks. It is smooth and slick as the face of a mirror. The rock is dolomite, a kind of marble, polished by eons of wind and water.
The trail winds and the gap between the walls widens enough to let the sun in. Even in January, a walk up this trail will be warm work, and you will realize the wisdom behind the ubiquitous park warnings to take plenty of water with you when you go into the back country.
It is only an hour or two, in and out, but the walk has a feel to it. The road—and a lot of other things—seems far, far behind, and you are reduced to a pleasant sort of insignificance.
There is another road, further beyond Stovepipe Wells, the run to Emigrant. You can take this one to a trailhead where you can start in for Telescope Peak. This is a much more ambitious undertaking, and you would have made sure someone knew you were going in—and to come looking for you if you weren’t back by a certain hour. The last stretch of this hike will, in some seasons, require crampons and an ice ax. It’s possible to hike both Telescope Peak and Badwater—the highest and lowest points in the park—on the same day.
Along the Emigrant road, as elsewhere in the park, there is evidence of a time when, despite its name and the hardships that came with its terrain and weather, people tried to make a living out of Death Valley. They mined this ground for copper and gold and other minerals and, especially, for borax. The ruins of some of the old, paid-out mining operations stand forlornly along the side of the road. And you can hike back to old mine sites where the shafts are still open but you are advised, sternly, not to enter.
You wonder who would be tempted.
On the way out, in the late afternoon, you sense the temperature dropping. It grows cold quickly, and in the last part of the day, the solitary creatures that live here become more active. A pair of very lean coyotes might be lingering around your vehicle, hoping for a handout.
The day can end just about anywhere in the park. The sunsets are, everywhere, both rich and subtle, bringing up the color in the barren hillsides and the patchy flats. The desert colors, dawn and dusk, are unlike those of any other environment.
But if the day ends at sunset, the glories of the desert do not. Death Valley is, perhaps, the finest place in North America for going out in the late night and looking up into the heavens. There is no light pollution from cities or towns, and when you look up, the sheer number of stars is enough to make you reel.
This may, perhaps, be the essence of the Death Valley experience. It is about time and vastness.
Geoffrey Norman, a writer in Vermont, is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard. This article is the first in a series celebrating 100 years of the National Park Service, sponsored by Xanterra and produced by The Weekly Standard.
