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For my first vacation this year (there may be another - we'll see) I went on a 4 day hiking trip to Death Valley. Like all the other trips I've done, this was a great trip in many ways. I left home on Wednesday, 2/4/2015, and got home Monday, 2/9. I had direct flights between Indianapolis and Las Vegas where the trip officially started and ended. In between we visited and hiked in Death Valley National Park.
One interesting feature of this trip is that this was the first time Mountain Travel - Sobek has run it. It was offered several times in November and December but no one appears to have signed up for any of those times. However you couldn't tell that this was the first time it had been run. Everything came off very smoothly.
As with any hiking trip the weather can be a big factor. Death Valley is one of the driest places in the country. They get an average of 2 inches of rain a year. So rain wasn't a concern or an issue. Death Valley also holds the world record for hottest official temperature of 134 degrees F. There have been higher reported temperatures but official temperatures must be taken in the shade and a certain height above the ground. However severe temperatures here happen during the summer, not the winter. While we were there we did see 85 degrees but generally temperatures in the 70's. This is one reason the trip was offered in February rather than July. Also deserts get cold at night. It did cool off significantly but nothing compared to the temeratures I saw when I left home for the trip.
One clue to the conditions in Death Valley are the names of a number of the places we visited, "Bad Water", "Furnace Creek", "Dante's View", "The Devil's Corn Field" and "The Devil's Golf Course." Of these, Bad Water is the best know since it is the lowest point in the U.S., 282 feet below sea level. We were joking, wondering after visiting Bad Water, if we were going to get altitude sick when we returned to the higher altitudes of home.
Bad Water is a very small pond or marsh, something like 1200 square feet. It is an environmentally sensitive area and there are viewing platforms around it but no one is permitted in that immediate area. At Bad Water the highway goes past it, there's a parking lot and a large overlook area. Then there are ramps down to the viewing platforms and from there you can walk out onto the salt flats. After walking around we returned to the overlook area where we were going to have lunch. Talk about fancy, the leaders had collapsible chairs setup for us. While sitting around relaxing in the chairs a very strong wind came up and some of the chairs started to blow away. We jumped up to grab them when suddenly the wind took my hat off and blew it right into the middle of Bad Water. I immediately wrote off my hat but it was embarrassing to have it right in the middle of such a sensitive area. Our leader went to the park rangers and got permission to retrieve it. At least he wasn't doing it for me but to protect this environment.
While the hat issue wasn't my fault I still felt a little guilty. But I felt a little better later that day. We did a short hike after Bad Water and then drove to see Artist's Palette, an assembly of multicolored volcanic rocks. The park ranger who watched the hat retrieval earlier at Bad Water happened to be there. A sudden wind came up and send her hat sailing. If one of our group hadn't been down the road a ways, she would have lost her hat.
We visited and hiked on some sand dunes. Usually in a national park there are lots of signs about staying on the marked trails and that you're in an environmentally sensitive area. But that sure wasn't the case with the sand dunes. You could go anywhere you wanted to and people did. Overnight the wind would cover up all signs that anyone was ever there.
When a trip ends, even a short trip like this one, it's hard to say goodbye to the people you didn't know 4 days earlier but almost instantly became friends with. But I was finally able to put into words another issue I have with trips ending: Suddenly I have to resume responsibility for my own care and feeding. It sure is great to have 4 days where every issue which comes up is someone else's problem.
From Wikipedia: "Death Valley Days is an American radio and television anthology series featuring true stories of the old American West, particularly the Death Valley area." The series ran from 1952 to 1970 and had several hosts including Ronald Reagan. Sometimes I have trouble coming up with an appropriate title for my trip reports. However sometimes it seems pretty obvious.