Friday, March 9, 2012

Death Valley, CA - Sunrise to Sunset

Up early today to see the sunrise on Zabriski Point. The cover of the book I bought 2 years ago on Death Valley has a marvelous picture of Manley Beacon from Zabriski Point that we just had to see it at sunrise. It’s about an hour to get there and it takes us 45 minutes to get ready. The sunrise is at 6:00 (today since Daylight Savings Time starts Saturday night. We wish we could wait until Sunday for sunrise so we wouldn’t have to rise so early.) You can do the math and know we set the alarm for 4:00 for an extra margin of safety. What we forgot to account for is that this is the mountains and it took 45 minutes for the rising sun to reach Manley Beacon. Shucks. We got there early, the sun gets to Zabriski later and we waited in the cold wind for about 1 hour. Luckily we had worn our down jackets over our hoodies.
SunriseatZabriskiePoint-15-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
Meanwhile, we’re listening to the other ‘professional’ photographers talking about F-shops and ISO. Me, I’m just pointing and shooting.

When we got out of the car at Zabriski Point, we noticed a bunch of other photographers taking off over the ridge line to the right with their head lamps on, their tripods and camera equipment in their hands walking the ridge line in the dark. Ummm - not what I could do at 5:30. Another photographer was arriving as we were and he told us to stand on the small hill in front of Zabriski. If you stand on the Point, those who stand on the hill will block your shot. So, we stood on the hill. Sure enough, those on the Point had us in their shots. Gary, being the fair guy that he is, went up and told them that there was lots of room where we were but only 2 came down.

We first took some shots of the moon setting beyond the mountains on the other side of the Valley. This was a bonus since we hadn’t expected this, nor had we expected to get good pictures by moonlight. But, it was light enough to give an eerie glow to the hills below.
ZabriskiePointSunrise-31-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
Then the moon disappeared and our attention turned to the rising sun and its effects on the same hillsZabriskiePointSunrise-59-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
and on other hills around us.
ZabriskiePointSunrise-65-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg

ZabriskiePointSunrise-58-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
Now it’s time for breakfast and we headed on over to Furnace Creek which is in the center of Death Valley. Here is the motel, the lodge, the campground, the store, the airport, the Visitor Centre, the golf course, a large campground, and a small museum. There is also a restaurant and a ‘saloon.’ I went to the store to ask for the newspaper but they come in at 12:00 with the mail. No e-mail, no wi-fi, no phone service and now they tell me there is no newspaper. And, now Gary and I have to talk to each other over breakfast? How primitive. Well, somehow we made it through breakfast and were on to our hike of the day.

We’ve done this hike before and liked it so much that we wanted to do it again. It’s a hike over, around, and between some beautiful golden hills and around the aforementioned Manley Peak called the Gower Gulch hike.
GoldenCanyon_GowerGulchLoopHike-2-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
It begins in Gold Canyon which originally was a paved road meandering through the canyon. In February 1956 a 4-day storm dumped more than 2” of rain and, on the last day, a huge outburst of rain sent rock, mud and debris rushing down the canyon, destroying the road. There are still remnants of it here but it is a hiking canyon now. As we entered the canyon, we met an older couple who hike a lot. They do not have a tow vehicle so, sometimes when they get to places that are a ways in to hike, they hitch a ride with someone else going in to hike. Cute.

This hike is pretty free-form since many have hiked here before us. There are trails all over, through these sandstone hills. But, the colors of these golden hills are stupendous.
GowerGulchHike-6-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg

GowerGulchHike-3-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
The hike is continually changing as the underlying rocks crumble under the weight of the rocks above and they all fall into the wash below. The canyon then comes to an abrupt end when thre is a 25’ high dry falls.
GowerGulchHike-20-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
Luckily there is a trail around this and we headed back to the car.
GowerGulchHike-10-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
While we were hiking today we met the nicest group of 3 laughing happy ladies out for a hike also. I could tell they were Japanese before we had even met them because they were covered head to toe. They had long pants, long-sleeved shirts and hats with long neck protectors. They also had full packs with them and hiking sticks. We see too many Americans hiking without hats, without hiking boots, carrying water bottles in their hands. These women were prepared: I imagine they had splints in their packs in case anyone broke a wrist. However, we enjoyed meeting them since they were a joyful bunch. It was lunch time and they sat down to eat and carried on a continual conversation. They asked us to take a picture of their ‘hiking club’ and we asked them to take a picture of us.

Afterwards we drove down to Badwater which is the lowest point the Western Hemisphere at - 282 feet. It was named by a prospector after his thirsty burro refused to drink. And, do you know the lowest point in the world which is 1030’ lower than Badwater?
BadwaterBasin-1-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
2 years ago, in the spring of 2010, we visited Death Valley for the first time. It was after a particularly rainy January and February and the floor of the Valley was covered in a carpet of yellow flowers. We also found scores of the rare Desert Five Spot flower everywhere.
AlongBadwaterRoad-11-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
In Badwater, we found translucent crystals of salt which glistened in the sun. This season is a season of drought and the floor of the desert is covered in sand and rock,
GowerGulchHike-24-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
there are no yellow flowers and no Five Spots. The salt crystals in Badwater are brown with sand and breaking up.

An entirely different view.

Finally we headed for home, but not after stopping at the ruins of the Harmony Borax Works. There were actual working silver and gold mines which were successful. But the most profitable business in Death Valley was the mining of borax. Both Gary and I remember the ads for 20-Mule Team Borax which sponsored the old TV program, ‘Death Valley Days’.
HarmonyBoraxWorks-12-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
And, by the way, the teams did not always have 20 mules, sometimes they had less than 20 and sometimes they had horses. Ouch. Another legend down the tubes. However, these teams pulled the borax - and water- across the deserts of Death Valley and the mountains surrounding it to the manufacturing plant from 1883 - 1888. Each team pulled 2 enormous wagons each loaded with 10 tons of borax and a water wagon behind. The total haul weighed 36 tons. The trip to the railheads took 10 or more days one way. The borax mill was closed in 1888 when a supply of borax was discovered much nearer the railhead.
HarmonyBoraxWorks-11-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
Our campground is about 5 miles away from one of the major sand dune fields in the park - much to our dismay on Tuesday during the sand storm. Today when we drove by in the late afternoon, we noticed that they look particularly nice in the late aft. sun. We stopped to take a picture then noticed that they looked much more sculpted and much more angular. Sand dunes pile up and pile up until they are too perpendicular for sand and then they fall into a pyramid with 34-degree sides. These sand dunes today have sides that are much steeper. We’re thinking that’s because of the recent winds and that the sand has not fallen down to the 34-degree angle. But, see for yourself - look at the two pictures we’ve taken. The first is on Sunday before the sand storm. The second is today, 2 days after the sand storm. Notice how much more angular the sand dunes in the second picture are.
SandDunes-2-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg

SandDunes-15-2012-03-9-21-01.jpg
In the evening we got ready for a long trip down a washboard road in the way backwoods of Death Valley. We made sure we had loads of extra water, we got out our down jackets and extra warm clothes, I got out extra protein bars and a larger container for food. We wanted to be prepared in case anything happened and we had to stay overnight.

We also had a real treat, I had bought some Doritos and we had them for a snack in the evening. Usually we have fruit and a bit of yogurt but today we ‘sinned.’

However, as we were laying in bed, we both decided that we were a bit beat with all the activity we’d done this week that we wanted a day of rest on Saturday before we moved to Acton, CA. So, we’re going to take a day off. So much for all the packing for tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment