Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
Saint Augustine
I am a vagabond, a wanderer, a rolling stone and Death Valley captured my soul. The National Park is an agnostic’s open air cathedral, an Elysium oasis, a visual banquet. I scan Mother Nature’s portrait gallery; snow capped Telescope Peak, the multicolored Badlands, Badwater Basin, the towering Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, and the Devil’s Cornfield while biking up the valley to Ubehebe Crater. This must be my last “go around” cause “my ride” is heaven sent.
The morning light evaporates black shadows and accentuates the shrimp and grape colored canyon walls. The midday heat creates strikingly vivid mirages over the salt flats. They call the wayward desert wind, Mariah because of her crucifying ferocity across the valley floor. Overnight, migrating sand dunes can bury Stovepipe Wells Road six feet under. Remnants of Winter’s torrents, car sized boulders, are deposited as head stones on both sides of Rt 190, as this ribbon of asphalt treks across gravel gulches on route to Mesquite Springs. Flash floods in 2016 drowned and then washed away Scotties Castle Road. The park service’s North entrance is scheduled for an Easter resurrection in 2020.
The Amargosa Mountains “slip-fault and uplift” (pics above). They resemble wild stallions bucking their mount. Chomping at the bit, this rustler galloped over Daylight Pass, through Painted Canyon, and across Artist’s Palette on the Eastern escarpment. The valley sinks while the peaks rise. These mountains have legs.
Death valley stretches Badwater Basin the way old men stretch waistlines. At two hundred and eighty-two feet below sea level, the salt flats inch wider every year. At nine miles wide the valley has entered a middle age spread, and no leather belt can contain it. The Panamint Mountains to the West are reaching higher, the basin is sinking lower while ditching the Amargosa Mountain Range, the park’s Eastern border and wrong side of the “slip-fault” tracks.
Which gets to meat of my story, the Panamint Mountains have legs. Once upon a time the valley did not exist. The Panamint Mountains crested the Amargosa Mountain Range. There was no Death Valley. Then 35 million years ago, though no “fault” of its own, the Panamint Range galloped off into the Western sunset and left Badwater Basin in its dust. All this skedaddling erupted during the Cenozoic Era and grows inch by inch, in geological “slip-fault” slow motion.
Desert Time asks no questions and yet has all the answers. Death Valley is designated as a “wilderness area” so most roads are tire slashing rock. I did not trek gravel roads. After eight days and 400 miles of incredible biking I have ridden most of her asphalt roads. Daylight (4317 feet), Towne (4951 feet ), and Salsbury ( 3315 feet) Pass have been trekked. The North entrance to the park, Scotties Castle Road was closed to the public. I rode 35 miles up a dead end road, to Ubehebe Crater Rd. (2,292 ft) and coasted most of the way back. This empty roadway was ridden twice…once for the solitude and the second time for the silence. Both days Mariah was elsewhere. They call the wind Mariah out here. On two separate days, I rode from Furnace Creek (The Oasis) to Ashford Mills ruins. The air remained so dry there was no sweat in the 80 degree heat. Badwater Road was empty beyond Badwater Basin, seventeen miles south of Furnace Creek. The surrounding mountains were silent but entertaining. With lots of liquids on board I thought I could ride to tomorrow.
Death Valley suits my soul with dry heat, blistering sunshine, and painted panoramas. The north-south road hugs the eastern edge of the valley from Ashford Mills Ruins to Ubehebe Crater and slowly ascends two thousand feet over the hundred miles. The East-West Road goes from Beatty, Nevada through Stovepipe Wells and on to Panamint Springs, California. The roads offered exciting terrain to keep my attention from wandering. The climb out to Daylight Pass is 4317 feet through Hell’s Gate. Townes Pass is 4951 feet and passes the Devil’s cornfield and Mesquite Springs Sand Dunes. Both climb outs are safe at four miles an hour. However it might be stretching the truth if you call the twisting and turning return trip over an eight percent downhill grade and speeding over 35 mph,…. safe.
Zabrinski’s Point and Dante’s View are unique sites to view sunrise, sunset, and night skies free of light pollution. Evaporated Lake Manly resurrects during winter.
Even though Badwater Basin is 282 feet below sea level, it sits on top of 9000 feet of silt, and is surrounded by mountains 11,000 feet high, that grow higher each day. Mesquite Springs, Ash Meadows and the Oasis bubble up year round. Thirty-six geological formations live within the park’s boundaries and explain “desert time” to all visitors. The sand dunes rise one hundred feet with Sidewinder Rattlesnakes and Desert Kangaroo Rats living out a nightly life and death struggle. I’m grateful to have explored this World Heritage Site before I kicked the bucket.
Death Valley is an enormous dessert waiting to be enjoyed. Judy has always remarked, “Life is short, eat dessert first.” Thank heaven I don’t earn my daily bread baking in the sizzling, summer sun powering up Towne’s Pass. But the roads these past eight days in Death Valley have cooked up a new me… a half-baked fruitcake. At the end of this trek, I emerged a crummy chronicler, a nutty narrator, a cheery storyteller, offering a slice of humble, Americana pie….. all because this mountain has legs.
if that’s not nice I don’t know what dessert is.
so on down the road i ride.