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...