Salt Creek, Death Valley

This was just a short little walk around an interpretive trail.  It features something you don't see a lot of in Death Valley though ... water!

Here is one of the "100 feet below sea level" signs on the way there.  They have these signs on the highway at sea level and 100 feet below - I don't think they had one for 200 feet below, or if they did maybe it got stolen.

Yep, that's water all right!  We tasted it - just as advertised, it's salty!  In the spring this creek even has a salt-adapted fish that lives in it - they are there year-round but only come out and play in certain months, so we didn't see any.  We were there December 13.

Me on the boardwalk of the trail:

Oooo!  A sunbeam popped out for an instant, and Ed caught these next two photos:

And that was that; like I said, it was short.  Next we'll go visit the site of the old Borax works ...

Mosaic Canyon, Death Valley

The weather was overcast on December 13, so these photos might look a little more dull than those on the other days, plus the rocks here were possibly a little more subdued in colour compared to some trails, but not texture.  The narrow mouth of this canyon fills with fast moving water after storms, and the rocks are worn very smooth.

It's another narrow trail:

I'll try not to show you too many photos, but I find the rocks just so darned interesting:

Another plucky desert survivor, this plant growing out of a rock crack:

The trail curves off again to the right into another narrows:

The canyon walls have several different rock formations, but I think it gets it's name, Mosaic Canyon, from these conglomerates:

Eventually the wash opened up here, but it narrows a bit more further down:

I thought these layered rocks were pretty cool too:

This is at the end of the trail, where the canyon ends at a wall that would be a waterfall after a storm.  Ed climbed up beside it and took this photo of me:

I think this is a little side canyon off the main trail, it didn't go anywhere:

Heading back along the same narrows near the mouth of the trail.  It's too bad I'm not in this photo for scale - it's narrow!

More cool rock, this time marble that has been shaped by the water:

And out the mouth of the canyon...

We returned to the car to find this determined and assertive raven pecking at the windshield:

We thought he'd buzz off once we approached, but instead he called in a reinforcement.  Eventually we had to just get in the car and hope the ravens didn't expect us to let them drive.

On the way down the road from the canyon, the light was doing amazing things, Ed got this photo with his zoom lens of the distant Mesquite sand dunes:

More beautiful light along the road:

Next stop, Salt Creek ...

Devil's Cornfield, Death Valley

Can you see a naming theme in play in Death Valley?  I guess Satan claimed this territory, maybe Jesus got Sequoia.

Anyway, the weather was interesting this day, Dec 13, 2012.  Lots of clouds - there was even some rain!  This is the Devil's Cornfield, I guess the plants and spacing evoke the cornfield after the harvest.

Anyway, this was just a stop at the side of the road on our way to Mosaic Canyon, so we're heading there now...

Golden Canyon, Death Valley

This was yet another amazing hike in Death Valley.  It was towards the end of the day, so we got the "golden light" of late afternoon.  Most of these photos are Ed's as his camera handles shadows a lot better than mine does (plus he's a better photographer, but the cameras really do matter!).  Also, as the light got better and better as time went on, most of the photos are from the hike back.  They're not really in order either.

This was towards the furthest point of the hike - we had planned to go further, but it was so windy that it became unsafe, this is me descending from the spot (where the trail meets the horizon) where it just got too windy and steep to continue safely:

That's the peak we'd been at the base of when we turned around:

This is from a little side trail earlier in the hike.  There were all these little narrow sub-canyons you could hike into off the main trail.  I wish we'd had more time to explore more of them.

This formation below is (I think) called the Cathedral:

We found a path (it was fun, through narrow cracks and little tunnels) to take us to the base of it:

Trail on the way back:

If you had any doubts that Death Valley is a breathtaking, amazing landscape, these next photos will convince you:

You can see the trail again in the next ones:

This is almost at the mouth of the canyon.  Believe it or not, until the 1970's, this canyon was paved and cars drove into it!  They had a huge storm and the road was washed out, but a few bits of pavement remain, the two photos below show some remaining chunks of asphalt, going back to nature:

That was all for December 12.  We'll be heading to Mosaic Canyon on the 13th, so c'mon back for that...