DEATH VALLEY: A LAND OF EXTREMES

In a remote corner of the middle of nowhere (okay, that may have been a bit of an exaggeration; we were actually about 120 miles northwest of Vegas in the northern portion of California's Mojave Desert) the alien-looking landscape was hotter than hell, a scorching 116 degrees Fahrenheit, the afternoon we arrived.  There’s good reason this remote corner of the desert is called Death Valley.

As we made our final descent into the valley, I was struck by the beauty of this alien-looking landscape.   A maze of wildly eroded geological folds gave way to . . .

With all those folds and wrinkles at Zabriskie Point, these mountains must be really old.

. . . a surreal landscape of vast salt flats at the very bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains in every direction.  

Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.

The place undoubtedly gives geologists goose bumps despite the heat.  Apparently every conceivable geological formation that exists on Earth can be found in this desert wilderness; it covers a staggering 3,396,000 acres;  

We hiked for 30 minutes in the blazing sun (not a good idea) to see this natural bridge formation.

which makes Death Valley the largest of the designated national park wilderness in the contiguous United States. 

There are more factoids where that came from, literally hot off the press, despite the fact we lasted only 24 hours in this beautiful hellhole.  Early advertisements in the 1920s boasted, “You might enjoy a trip to Death Valley, now !  It has all the advantages of hell without the inconveniences.”  Amen to that! 

I do think you’ll enjoy my Ten Things You Might Not Know About Death Valley.

Our 3 pm arrival at Death Valley made exploring the salt pan down right dangerous.

Death Valley is the land of extremes.  It is the hottest, lowest and driest place in the United States.  The record temperature was a scorching 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.  Just to clarify, that official temperature was recorded in the shade three feet off the ground in Death Valley’s Furnace Creek area (obviously aptly named), where we just happened to be staying the night during our visit.   The record temperature is two degrees cooler than Azizia, Libya’s world record of 136 degrees Fahrenheit.    

The “unofficial” hottest temperature in Death Valley, taken on the ground in direct sunlight, was 201 degrees Fahrenheit.   I’m a believer!  

Add loneliest to the list of extremes in Death Valley.

Why so hot, here in Death Valley?    Think pressure cooker.  The depth and shape of Death Valley (the valley is a long, narrow basin walled in by four high, steep mountain ranges) contributes to the hot summer temperatures.  The clear, dry air and sparse plant life allow sunlight to continuously heat the desert surface.  The heated air rises slightly, but trapped by the high valley walls, it’s recycled back to the valley floor.  Those pockets of descending air are only slightly cooler than the surrounding hot air.  As they descend, they are compressed and heated even more by the low elevation (282 feet below sea level) air pressure. 

These moving masses of superheated air blow through the valley, creating the extremely high temperatures responsible for an evaporation rate approaching 150 inches per year.  Rain rarely gets a chance to reach the floor of Death Valley. Precipitation averages only 1.9 inches a year (keep in mind that’s an average; in 1929 and 1953, not a single drop of rain was recorded), although six inches of rain did fall during the winter of 1997-98.  

I'll undoubtedly think of Death Valley the next time I remove a hot pizza from the oven.

The salt pans of Death Valley indicate the area was once a large inland sea during the Pleistocene epoch.  As the Earth began to warm into the Holocene period, the water in Death Valley evaporated, leaving a one- to five-foot layer of salt in its wake.  A briny pond, four times saltier than the ocean, still remains in the basin during the winter.  It shrunk to little more than a puddle during our visit last week.  

I still think this puddle was nothing more than a mirage.

To the untrained eye (that would be both of my eyes, which is to say I’m virtually blind when it comes to this sort of thing), Death Valley looks bereft of life, plant and animal.  Alas, since my latest and greatest field trip, I’ve learned this remote corner of the middle of nowhere actually supports 1,000 native plant species, 50 which are endemic to the park; supports 50 mammal species, 307 bird species, 36 reptiles; harbors fish, snails, and other aquatic animals found nowhere else in the world.   I saw no signs of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, or snails, but I did see a bit of the plant life.

Mother Nature's silver foxes.

The Desert Holly had been stripped of almost any color.  Apparently the low-growing shrub soaks up the salt in the ground along with any moisture, and then, during blooming season, from January to April, it excretes the sodium deposits onto its leaves.  As a result, the plant turns from green to silver – a color change that helps it reflect the intense sunlight instead of absorbing it.  

People have lived in or passed through Death Valley for more than 10,000 years.

The name Death Valley is attributed to a group of gold rush pioneers who entered the valley in 1849, thinking it was a shortcut to California.  One 49er died during their trek through the valley.  All would have died had they not been rescued by two young men in the group who had learned to be scouts, William Lewis Manly and John Rogers.  In their account, as the party climbed out of the valley over the Panamint Mountains, one of the men turned, looked back, and said, “goodbye Death Valley.” The name stuck.  

This ore car is evidence of the grizzly prospectors that once hoped to tap Death Valley's riches.

At one time, gold, silver, lead, zinc, antimony, fluorspar, cinnabar, Epsom salts, mercury, tungsten, copper, borax, talc, sodium chloride and manganese were mined at Death Valley. In 1976, as new mining techniques and open pit mines lead to public outcries, Congress passed the Mining in Parks Act, which restricted and regulated mining in Death Valley for the first time.  The Monument is closed to new mining claims, and previously established claims and mines are closely monitored.

You need a considerable handicap to play the salt pinnacles of Devils Golf Course.

Death Valley is home to the Timbisha Shoshone American Indian tribe.  With passage of the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act in 2000, the tribe was allotted acreage within their ancestral homeland to live on in perpetuity.  The tribe and the National Park Service, working as partners, jointly manage zones within the park boundary.  

The famous 20 mule teams excavated the real gold in Death Valley, borax.

The legendary twenty-mule teams offer an enduring impression of Death Valley. These big teams once pulled massive wagons hauling borax from the Harmony Borax Works near Furnace Creek to the railhead near Mojave, a 165-mile, grueling ten day trip across primitive roads.  The teams only ran for six years, from 1883 to 1889, but they proved a successful advertising campaign promoting 20-Mule-Team Borax Soap and the popular Death Valley Days radio and later television show in the 1930s.