Death Valley
Yami and I stayed in the park from November 29th until December 4th. Here are some of the highlights.
Zabriskie Point. A place with interesting history. Named after the vice-president of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, which ran twenty-mule teams through the area, from Death Valley to the nearest rail spur. Featured on the cover of U2’s Joshua Tree album (there are no Joshua Trees anywhere nearby — it is too dry). French philosopher Michel Foucault tripped on acid there in 1975 and said it was the best experience of his life. We stopped there Sunday around sunset and I went on a moonlight hike that night.
Highs and lows. Days 3 and 4 of our journey saw us visiting the lowest point in North America, at 282 feet below sea level, and then climbing the peak 20 miles to the west, more than 11,000 feet above the basin. Nothing grows in the salt-poisoned basin. In the mountains, limber and bristlecone pines, which may be thousands of years old, shade the trail.
Ancient plants. Speaking of bristlecone pines, these trees are believed to be the oldest organisms on earth. Individual trees may be nearly 5000 years old. Creosote colonies in the area may be even older. The bushes we see today in the Mojave Desert may be genetically identical to the first plants that colonized the region after the last ice age, about 11,700 years ago.
Canyons, canyons, canyons. I hiked Mosaic Canyon, with slots of breccia, marble, and dolomite; Willow Canyon, where we found bighorn sheep scat and bones; and Desolation Canyon, where rainbow rocks frame a stunning view of the basin.
The Fox and the Pupfish. Our second day took us to Mesquite Flat, whose dunes tower 100 feet above an ancient lakebed. We came across a kit fox sunning itself outside its burrow. Later that day, we explored the Salt Creek Interpretive Trail a few miles away, where we looked for but did not find endemic pupfish.
