Time for a hike and Death Valley has a slew of them. We wanted a new one and I found one that I thought would suit us. The description in my Death Valley hiking book was ‘colorful rock formations’, ‘petrolyphs’, and expansive views of remote backcountry.’ Sounds pretty good to me. Of course, my eyes glazed over when I read: ‘park at the junction if you have any doubts about whether you car can negotiate the final very difficult 2.6 miles.’ Sure we can, we have a Jeep.
We awoke at 7:00, ate breakfast and drove the 10.5 miles from our campsite to the Marble Canyon junction. The first 8 miles were akin to a washboard and then we dropped down into the wash. I often find hiking in a wash difficult and you want us to drive in a wash? Sure enough, for 2.5 miles. Sometimes it was rocky, sometimes it had boulders, sometimes it was deceptively smooth. At no time did we travel faster than 10 mph. At times I was in front of the car directing Gary how to drive around and between some particularly high boulders in the roadway. We have a high clearance vehicle but we’re not on stilts. And, of course, 10.5 miles in, at the junction, we found other cars. Seldom do we find ourselves completely alone in the back country. People pop up when we least expect them.
As we entered the canyon, the morning sun was shining on the hills and the reds were awesome. Who would think a place with the name of Death Valley would have such beauty?
Then we had to negotiate that final 2.6 miles to the trailhead. 9:00 and we’re not even at the trailhead yet. The next 2.3 miles were as bad as the last 2.5 miles and, when we found a place where we could jockey 180 degrees around so we could face out when we wanted to leave, we decided to park and walk the last .3 miles to the trailhead.
The hike was stunningly beautiful. Well, actually it was a wash slog through some stunningly beautiful rock formations. Now a wash slog is like walking through a sand dune, your foot always slips back when you actually want to move forward. When you try to push off on your toe for the next step, you toe sinks into the sand and you get no push off. But the rocks - they were something else. And, who gets excited about rocks? Well, look at these. We started in a narrow slot
found these banded colors and could only imagine the forces that uplifted and twisted them so abruptly,
saw these zebra-striped rocks on the side of the canyon
found this rock that we couldn’t move so had to detour around (luckily our hiking book told us how)
came to another slot
and saw some other colorful rocks.
We had planned to end at where the book described as a ‘large boulder blocking the wash which can be easily bypassed by taking the rock steps on the left.’ We saw this,
hardly thought it a ‘large’ boulder and continued on trying to find that boulder so we could return to our car. And we kept slogging up the wash. Finally, our own personal GPS which we use for hiking told us that we were way past where the boulder was supposed to be and close to where the next trail came in. Knowing how long it would take us to hike back to the trailhead AND how long it would take us to negotiate our way back down that road, we knew we had to turn back if we wanted to get back to the washboard road and out of the canyon by dark.
Guess what? That was the boulder. Heavens, that’s hardly a large boulder. Oh, well. We made it back to the car and negotiated our way out. And, yes, there is a road amongst those boulders.
Did we enjoy this hike? Immensely. Did we enjoy the road? You betcha.
We made it back to the campground in time to catch this sunset.
And this moonrise.
Another glorious day in Death Valley. However, tomorrow is a ‘wind event.’ Windy with gusts to 60 and 70. Hmmm.
11.5 1500’
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