Death Valley
Thanksgiving 2008 – Death Valley National Park
In an effort to document some portion of Death Valley online, I’ve written up roughly what I did on my camping trip to Death Valley NP and even have some pictures for each of the different things.
Camping
There are campgrounds in the park, some free, some not free. Overall they are in pretty good shape and aren’t a bad place to camp. If you have the time, camping is allowed anywhere 2 miles from developed roads with some small exceptions like the dunes. So, simply park by the road, walk 2 miles in (45min or so) and camp. No fires though.
Stovepipe wells – mostly for RV camping, there’s some tent sites.
Furnace Creek – both RV and tent camping, tons of sites.
Day 1 – Desert Camping
First day we drove in from Las Vegas, its around a 2-3 hour drive. We got to Stovepipe wells, drove a little past and camped in the valley some 2 miles from the road. There’s a short road near Stovepipe wells that leads to an airstrip (and up into some canyons) that works well for parking and camping. Its free to do this!
Camping in the desert was very nice, no one around to make noise or bother us. We didn’t camp on the dunes though we were in the same area as the death valley dunes. The walk out was our first look at hiking in the desert, the remants of dry lakebed is nearby.
Day 2-4 – Cottonwood + Marble Canyon Loop
The first item on our list to do was a backpacking trip. The loop we picked is the “most popular in the park” so the three of us figured it was probably not too difficult and even though it was 26 miles total with a bunch of elevation gain, should take us around 2 full days of hiking.
ADVICE: bring USGS topo maps. bring a GPS handheld and batteries. bring LOTS of water.
We parked at the split between marble and cottonwood canyon roads, these roads are 4WD access roads though were not that hard to navigate with a rental Chevy Trailblazer. Starting mid-afternoon, a few miles of easy walking on the road leads to the start of the trail. The trail starts with a bunch of cottonwood trees and goes for a number of miles with a brush filled canyon that is not easy to navigate. It’s not really possible to get lost until cottonwood springs but the canyon is so brush filled that it makes for slow moving.
There’s not any water until you get pretty far up the canyon through the brush. Even then we had to push through very thick brush to get to the trickle of water to pump. At the end of the canyon there’s cottonwood springs and it was flowing better than were we camped the first night. The first night of camping we spent around 2 miles from the springs at what looked like a previously used campsite.
The next day we setout to finish the hike at sunrise. We ate mostly dried food (don’t try the Huevos Rancheros they were not so good) for our backpacking meals this time to cut down on the weight, then substituted water for the weight we cut.
After we made it out of cottonwood canyon we got somewhat lost. Its not easy to get lost here, but we managed to do it (we didn’t have the 7.5min topo maps). The canyon opens up into a huge plain with mountains all around. We knew we were looking for the entrance to go back to marble canyon, and it wasn’t easy to spot. The entrance is actually UP in elevation along the mountains after you get out of cottonwood canyon.
After you drop down a little into the canyon, the next difficult part is finding Dead Horse Canyon. We made a mistake here and ended up hiking down a different canyon that eventually has a dry fall that is too tall to climb safely. Here’s a look at the GPS topo, it’s pretty clear where we went wrong. There’s no water in the wrong canyon and we ran a little bit short on water that day. Luckily we found the spring in Dead Horse Canyon early the next day and filled up there.
From Dead Horse Canyon its an easy hike out, down marble canyon to the road. It’s not short, but its all downhill and pretty easy to follow. After we had gotten back to the car we were tired and beat.
Day 4-9 – Other Death Valley sights
After backpacking we took the rest of the trip to see the remaining parts of the park.
Wildrose peak is right next to Telescope peak – the highest peak in the park. When it’s a clear day it is an impressive sight from the lowest point in the park, ~280ft below sea level, to the highest, 11,043ft. Climbing telescope peak would have required additional gear, so we opted for the peak next to it, Wildrose. It’s still a long climb up, but it didn’t look nearly as difficult as the telescope peak climb. The hike up wildrose is around 4.2 miles one-way, with 2200ft of elevation climb. It starts around 7,000ft, so it ends up pretty high. It was windy and cold at the top, so it wasn’t an ideal place to stop and eat or really sit around. It does offer a pretty nice view in both directions of the park.
Artist’s Drive is a drive-through tour of some colored areas of the valley. The road is near Furnance Creek and doesn’t take long to do. Go on a sunny day, the colors and visibility are more impressive.
Salt flats can be seen almost anywhere south of artists drive, though the best place to go is at Badwater Basin. Badwater is the lowest point in the valley (and North America) at 282ft below sea level. From the road you can hike out a ways onto the salt flats and see how cool the crystalized salt really is.
Towards the North side of the park is Ubehebe Crater, which is exactly like it sounds – a big hole in the ground. We hiked around the perimiter and to a smaller crater nearby and then descended down into the main crater. It takes a little bit of work to get back up.
On the way to Ubehebe is Scotty’s Castle, a fun stop. It’s a little touristy, but not nearly as bad as I expected. We saw a coyote right by the castle and walked around for a little while. There’s a gift shop and stuff there. It’s a short stop but worth it if you can go on the way somewhere else in the park.
The dunes near Stovepipe wells is one of the most impressive parts of the park. It’s not far from the road to the dunes, and a good time to head out is around sunset so youcan see the sun set over the mountains. The dunes are amazing, and much more different from anything else in the park. It’s one of the things that is very unique to Death Valley and is something worth hiking out to to see. It’s maybe a mile or so from the road to the higher dunes and definitely worth it.
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