The Valley of Death: Stories from Death Valley
Day 0: 5th of January, 2017
I woke up in Boulder, CO to a foot of snow on the ground. The university was closed. I went to work via the local bus anyway, after having little sleep the night before. I met a couple, one of whom I had worked with at the campus bookstore. The couple were waiting to see if they could get into the buildings on campus. They sat there freezing in the near zero degree weather. I said why don't you follow me? I can get us into the Geography building. We walked through the middle of campus to Guggenheim. I walked down the stairs, and got us into the building. There I stood and talked with them for a little while. I found out that the woman was doing a first bachelor's degree after having transferred from the University of Chicago. We talked for a bit and I found out that she was interested in Geology, Geography, science, and books. She stood there and told me that she had over 200 credits. I wondered how it was possible to stay an undergraduate with a first degree for so long.
Her boyfriend talked a bit and said that he was was double majoring in Physics and Computer Science. He worked at LASP (the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics) on Satellites, as well as NCAR, (the National Center for Atmospheric Research). He talked about how he was helping to develop a new method to smooth the metal on the satellites in order to make it space worthy. I thought it was very interesting myself.
That same day I went to my job at the soils lab on campus, to figure out what was happening with the soil samples. I had made a mistake and mislabeled some of the samples. It tore me up inside because I knew how long they took to collect. I wanted to fix it on my own. I tried for at least three hours, and could not get it right. I got confused. I took the bus back to my apartment. When I arrived at my apartment, I felt awful, and admitted that to my friends who had just arrived from out of town, that I had messed up. Then I had a bit of a panic attack, because I couldn't fix my mistake, and the combination of the weather and the mental stresses exhausted me. I sat there and went through the motions of life for the next two hours in a mode of panic. Time seemed to stop, and moments lasted forever. I told my friends that I no longer wanted to go on my trip to Death Valley. They couldn't seem to understand why? I couldn't tell them. I went upstairs to take a nap and come down after fifteen minutes. They told me that I should still go on the trip, that it was exactly what I needed. I wasn't so sure at that point. We went over to my friends house and watched television with him that night. Then we went back to my place & slept the night away. The next morning...
Day I: 6th of January, 2017
I woke up and was dropped off on campus for a doctor's appointment. They said that I had experienced a panic attack as I had thought. They also encouraged me to go on my trip and let me have some alone time, and the chance to get away and explore.
Part II:
I went back to my apartment and we packed for the trip. We left that day bound for Moab, Utah. About the time we got on the road I started feeling better from the previous day. We listened to a combination of NASA podcasts, followed by comedy bang bang, and the dirtbag diaries. We drove through the snowstorm in the western mountains of Colorado. Eventually, I ended up in a hostel that night. Along the road we had contemplated NASA's vertical farming with bacteria that could produce everything needed for a trip to Mars as well as using agricultural land, more productively. We could increase the production of crops on the land 10,000 times by using this method of vertical farming. To good to be true? Or a modern technological miracle? Probably somewhere in the middle...
Day I: Part III
We entered the hostel in Moab, called the Lazy Lizard. There we met all sorts of interesting people. We met people like a traveller from Switzerland who was hitchhiking through the Western United States for a month. He was living life by the seat of his pants, and had travelled through the same snowstorm in Colorado. He held a sign, "Stupid European trying to hitchhike." People seemed to like it, and would give him rides.
Day II: 7th of January, 2017
When we got up and made breakfast the next day, we met the same traveling swiss man. He told us that he was headed into the park for the day. He made about eight turkey and cheese sandwiches to take with him. I learned that he was also a Geography major, travelling the world. A great way to see the world. He talked of things like a new emerging economy beyond capitalism. It was where robots would do most of our jobs, and people would just work if they wanted to work, or work fifteen hours a week. We talked of global climate change, the collapse of civilization, and psychedelic mushrooms. Then he was off headed west into the park. Ryan, Mike, and I took off headed west ourselves.
Driving through Utah, the landscapes of red sandstone cliffs and mountains, and canyons took me by surprise. So many different landscapes in just a few short miles. Then we headed into Nevada towards the end of the day. Even the desert in the south was new to me. I had been to northern Nevada before. I knew what a desert was, but this was so much drier and different. Then we hit Las Vegas towards the end of the day. The city of casinos and boundless entertainment. It wan off of water drained from the Colorado River. The city that shouldn't be there. The desert city. Then we drove back through it and camped the night on the northeast shore of Lake Mead in a very interesting landscape. We threw out our sleeping bags under the stars, and listened to the coyotes.
Day III: 8th of January, 2017
We headed out and grocery shopped in Las Vegas at Trader Joe's. We were going to be eating well, eating healthy on our trip west. We drove until we saw a gas station just outside of Beatty, Nevada. It was called, "Area 51 gas station" and an Alien bar and Brothel attached. We went in the store full of Area 51 souvenirs and t-shirts covered with alien heads. Soon after Mike told me that Area 51 was actually in southern New Mexico.
We drove through Beatty, NV, a town that was very run-down with cobbled together houses and rusty trucks for sale. There were houses with broken windows propped up on stilts on the right, and a relatively nice looking motel on the left. Then we finished the drive into Death Valley. We met "Mike" a guy that camped 6 months out of the year at the campsite next to ours. Our Mike had bike stories to exchange with the new Mike. We cooked dinner on my Biolite stove, and headed to bed early.
It rained that night. It was very windy. Not what you'd expect in a place that gets less than two inches of rain a year. All of it seems to come in January, when the people are few and far between, and the landscape in endless...
Day IV: 9th of January, 2017
Out tents stayed up that night despite being blasted by 50 mph gusts all night long. We took rocks and ropes and secured them more properly to the parking lot campsite, 2,000 feet above the valley floor.
Following that, Ryan decided to stay at the campsite and relax and do nothing for the day. Mike and I decided to hit up the visitors center at the small town of Furnace Creek, where we found that there is an amazing variety of things to see in the park. On the way down we rounded a corner near Stovepipe Wells and picked up a hitchhiker. His name was hawk and he was headed to Parump to visit his ninety six year old father there. He was ready for a cup of coffee, and smelled of marijuana. Quite the place to hitchhike in Death Valley. He seemed happy and free in the wild. We dropped him off at the visitors center.
The history of the park is very interesting. There were native people here for 1000's of years before white settlers came through. We listened to a park ranger tell us about the 30 wagons that came through the valley on their search for gold further west in California. Only one of the wagons made it out, and a lady said, "Goodbye Death Valley", and the name stuck. Following this came minors who searched for precious metals but found the salt beneath their feet was more valuable. Mike and I visited the borax works where we saw the methods used to extract the salt and carry it out on a narrow wooden wagon covered with iron to keep it whole. We saw the early 1900's boiler from San Francisco.
After leaving the visitors center area, we walked along a boardwalk. There was a river where small fish allegedly prospered. We weren't able to spot any of the fish, but were amazed by the water that flowed through such a desolate place.
Day V: 10th of January, 2017
We learned of a place called Mosaic Canyon the previous day. Mike and I headed down into Stovepipe Wells to go to the trailhead. We met a couple of from our campsite whose car had broken down. It was a Jeep. The guy had left it in 4-wheel drive and ridden down the hill into Stovepipe at 60 mph. Mike and I tried to help them out, but had the feeling a tow truck and (AAA) service would be the best for them. We didn't feel bad for the guy, because his girlfriend was such "prime real estate". We informed them of the swimming pool and showers available for four dollars in Stovepipe. Then Mike and I headed to Mosaic Canyon.
The canyon was amazing, filled with smooth rock along the beginning like a slot canyon. It was very narrow and steep. Mud and gravel slid down the canyon and hardened to the walls. We hiked up the canyon for 1.5 miles and then scrambled further amazed by the vegetation along a narrow ridge with dropoffs on both sides. We slid down the other side into an even deeper canyon, and walked out. The variety of vegetation was amazing and can only be described through photos. There were plants with berries, small purple berries. there were some that had leaves with spike on them. And one small plant that was close to the ground with small purple flowers.
After the hike, we headed into Stovepipe Wells. We got showers and pools time. It great after five days on the road to stop and get a shower. We drove back to the campsite and cooked dirtbag chili for dinner. One sweet potato, three carrots, one can of refried beans, 1/2 cup quinoa, one can of corn, and a whole lot of love. Add salsa and hot sauce at will. We waited for Ryan to come stumbling in at sundown. He did. Mike and I were a bit worried after he did not answer the radio that day. We went to sleep with full belly's. It rained again that night.
Day VI: 11th of January, 2017
We woke up and had coffee with our neighbor Izzy, from California. She had an old stove from the 1940's. It was an old coleman stove. She also had an air press, which was kind of like a french press. We ate Biscotti and chocolate together. We drank good coffee. Then she and Mike decided to go for a hike to see a crater somewhere in the hills. I elected to be dropped off at Stovepipe Wells at the gas station to meditate, write, read and relax. Izzy's car was a minivan with a mountain bike, a road bike and a sleeping bag in the back. She wore the dirtbag lifestyle well. Tonight we plan to hike into the dunes after the sun goes down, and lookup at he boundless night sky above.
Ryan and I hiked out into the sand dunes under a nearly full moon. We both decided we would go out to the highest sand in sight which was quite a ways away, and over undulating sand dunes. We set out. Ryan wore my Indiana Jones hat and went barefoot. I wore Chacos and socks. We used the bright moonlight to guide us out into the dunes. It was a long way and neither of us had brought any water. We had quite a trippy time trying to judge terrain and distances between points in the moonlight. As well as the lines in the sand creating an optical illusionary experience. We wandered across cakes of hardened mud, and walked by many big dry bushy black plants. At one point Ryan mentioned, "Why does anyone need drugs when you have nature?" That seemed like a totally logical thought. We walked continually for quite a while. After following the "ridge line" of several sand dunes we ended up on top of the highest one in sight.
After resting, I pulled out my native american flute on top of the dune. I proceeded to play for a bit, and had quite a magical time with the nearly full moon overhead. We did not stay long. We headed back down the dune, Ryan rolled down and part ways up the dune next to ours. Ryan shouted at me, "Which direction!?" I yelled back, and as I did, another wanderer came over the top of the dune that I was on. He asked if we were trying to measure something. I told him, "No. We're just wandering around". We headed back towards the parking lot. Mike had the lantern sitting on top of the car to give us a point to find him by. He had taken a large log and stuck it upright in the in the sand on top of a dune bordering the parking lot. Mike said that he could hear the flute and that the coyotes had responded. Who would have thought that I would end up playing a flute on top of the highest sand dune in Death Valley? And that the coyotes would respond?
That night we cooked several cans of soup out of the back of my Subaru Outback under a nearly full moon.
Day VII: 12th of January, 2017
It was the first night that wasn't all that windy. All three of us, Mike, Ryan and I, were tired. We slept without the constant sound of wind through the tent fly. Once we woke up in the morning, we tore down our tents and packed the car. We had a huge breakfast and cooked the rest of our food. We said goodbye to Izzy, Marley and Mike. We headed down the road to the Furnace Creek visitor center, and there Mike tried to mail some postcards to no avail, and we walked down to Furnace Creek resort. They had a post office there, and I went and checked out the golf course while Mike mailed his cards. After that we headed out the south end of the park. Along the way we hit up Devil's Golf Course, which was an amazing array of unique salt formations that spanned most of the south side of Death Valley. They stretched as far as the eye could see, and farther.. literally...
That was definitely a spiritual moment of mine on the trip and I would love to go back to that place and meditate in the vast open land.
We headed down the road to Badwater Basin which is the lowest place on the continent of North America at -282 feet below sea level and sinking due to erosion. There Mike and I walked out into the valley on the man-flattened salt road. We checked out the Badwater pool near the sign which was filled with salty water.
Meanwhile, Ryan had decided to climb the cliff up to the sea level sign 282 feet on a cliff above. People watched and gawked and took photos as he climbed. They scolded him on being stupid and irresponsible. We scolded him on being stupid and irresponsible when returned with my keys to the Subaru. We finally really did head out the south end of the park.
Flashback: --- Earlier that day, we had been up to Zabriske Pointe. The road rose a few hundred feet above the valley. It was an area of colorful badlands. The actual point was a quarter mile or so up the paved path. I went that direction. Mike and Ryan headed up a less traveled hill next to it. It was a steep overlook. We waved at each other across the vast expanse. They came running down afterwards like adolescent monkeys.
As we headed out of the park, I took a few videos and we listened to NASA podcasts. Then we exited the park into Southern California. One of the towns we went through was called Parump, NV which was this absolutely enormous spread out town.
It was getting late and we needed a place to sleep. No one was up for camping because of the cold rain that fell. Eventually we decided to drive to St. George and stay in a hotel called the Coranado. When I checked in, the attendant asked the people in front of me if they were locals. "We charge local an extra $50," she said. "That's because we've had problems with partiers in the past." First of all, why would you admit to being a local if they charge an extra $50? That left me wondering..
Despite the negative start, the place was fine, and the room was a suite with two queen beds and a couch. It also included a kitchen. The total price was $51 which we split three ways. Score!
Day VIII: 13th of January, 2017
After rolling out of bed we headed down to breakfast and stuffed ourselves. We checked out and were on our way to Zion National Park around 10 am.
Upon arriving in Zion I wa astounded by the colors of the rock, and the abundant waterfalls.
.... To be continued at a later date...
Nick Whittemore
16th January, 2017
Day I: 6th of January, 2017
I woke up and was dropped off on campus for a doctor's appointment. They said that I had experienced a panic attack as I had thought. They also encouraged me to go on my trip and let me have some alone time, and the chance to get away and explore.
Part II:
I went back to my apartment and we packed for the trip. We left that day bound for Moab, Utah. About the time we got on the road I started feeling better from the previous day. We listened to a combination of NASA podcasts, followed by comedy bang bang, and the dirtbag diaries. We drove through the snowstorm in the western mountains of Colorado. Eventually, I ended up in a hostel that night. Along the road we had contemplated NASA's vertical farming with bacteria that could produce everything needed for a trip to Mars as well as using agricultural land, more productively. We could increase the production of crops on the land 10,000 times by using this method of vertical farming. To good to be true? Or a modern technological miracle? Probably somewhere in the middle...
Day I: Part III
We entered the hostel in Moab, called the Lazy Lizard. There we met all sorts of interesting people. We met people like a traveller from Switzerland who was hitchhiking through the Western United States for a month. He was living life by the seat of his pants, and had travelled through the same snowstorm in Colorado. He held a sign, "Stupid European trying to hitchhike." People seemed to like it, and would give him rides.
Day II: 7th of January, 2017
When we got up and made breakfast the next day, we met the same traveling swiss man. He told us that he was headed into the park for the day. He made about eight turkey and cheese sandwiches to take with him. I learned that he was also a Geography major, travelling the world. A great way to see the world. He talked of things like a new emerging economy beyond capitalism. It was where robots would do most of our jobs, and people would just work if they wanted to work, or work fifteen hours a week. We talked of global climate change, the collapse of civilization, and psychedelic mushrooms. Then he was off headed west into the park. Ryan, Mike, and I took off headed west ourselves.
Driving through Utah, the landscapes of red sandstone cliffs and mountains, and canyons took me by surprise. So many different landscapes in just a few short miles. Then we headed into Nevada towards the end of the day. Even the desert in the south was new to me. I had been to northern Nevada before. I knew what a desert was, but this was so much drier and different. Then we hit Las Vegas towards the end of the day. The city of casinos and boundless entertainment. It wan off of water drained from the Colorado River. The city that shouldn't be there. The desert city. Then we drove back through it and camped the night on the northeast shore of Lake Mead in a very interesting landscape. We threw out our sleeping bags under the stars, and listened to the coyotes.
Day III: 8th of January, 2017
We headed out and grocery shopped in Las Vegas at Trader Joe's. We were going to be eating well, eating healthy on our trip west. We drove until we saw a gas station just outside of Beatty, Nevada. It was called, "Area 51 gas station" and an Alien bar and Brothel attached. We went in the store full of Area 51 souvenirs and t-shirts covered with alien heads. Soon after Mike told me that Area 51 was actually in southern New Mexico.
We drove through Beatty, NV, a town that was very run-down with cobbled together houses and rusty trucks for sale. There were houses with broken windows propped up on stilts on the right, and a relatively nice looking motel on the left. Then we finished the drive into Death Valley. We met "Mike" a guy that camped 6 months out of the year at the campsite next to ours. Our Mike had bike stories to exchange with the new Mike. We cooked dinner on my Biolite stove, and headed to bed early.
It rained that night. It was very windy. Not what you'd expect in a place that gets less than two inches of rain a year. All of it seems to come in January, when the people are few and far between, and the landscape in endless...
Day IV: 9th of January, 2017
Out tents stayed up that night despite being blasted by 50 mph gusts all night long. We took rocks and ropes and secured them more properly to the parking lot campsite, 2,000 feet above the valley floor.
Following that, Ryan decided to stay at the campsite and relax and do nothing for the day. Mike and I decided to hit up the visitors center at the small town of Furnace Creek, where we found that there is an amazing variety of things to see in the park. On the way down we rounded a corner near Stovepipe Wells and picked up a hitchhiker. His name was hawk and he was headed to Parump to visit his ninety six year old father there. He was ready for a cup of coffee, and smelled of marijuana. Quite the place to hitchhike in Death Valley. He seemed happy and free in the wild. We dropped him off at the visitors center.
The history of the park is very interesting. There were native people here for 1000's of years before white settlers came through. We listened to a park ranger tell us about the 30 wagons that came through the valley on their search for gold further west in California. Only one of the wagons made it out, and a lady said, "Goodbye Death Valley", and the name stuck. Following this came minors who searched for precious metals but found the salt beneath their feet was more valuable. Mike and I visited the borax works where we saw the methods used to extract the salt and carry it out on a narrow wooden wagon covered with iron to keep it whole. We saw the early 1900's boiler from San Francisco.
After leaving the visitors center area, we walked along a boardwalk. There was a river where small fish allegedly prospered. We weren't able to spot any of the fish, but were amazed by the water that flowed through such a desolate place.
Day V: 10th of January, 2017
We learned of a place called Mosaic Canyon the previous day. Mike and I headed down into Stovepipe Wells to go to the trailhead. We met a couple of from our campsite whose car had broken down. It was a Jeep. The guy had left it in 4-wheel drive and ridden down the hill into Stovepipe at 60 mph. Mike and I tried to help them out, but had the feeling a tow truck and (AAA) service would be the best for them. We didn't feel bad for the guy, because his girlfriend was such "prime real estate". We informed them of the swimming pool and showers available for four dollars in Stovepipe. Then Mike and I headed to Mosaic Canyon.
The canyon was amazing, filled with smooth rock along the beginning like a slot canyon. It was very narrow and steep. Mud and gravel slid down the canyon and hardened to the walls. We hiked up the canyon for 1.5 miles and then scrambled further amazed by the vegetation along a narrow ridge with dropoffs on both sides. We slid down the other side into an even deeper canyon, and walked out. The variety of vegetation was amazing and can only be described through photos. There were plants with berries, small purple berries. there were some that had leaves with spike on them. And one small plant that was close to the ground with small purple flowers.
After the hike, we headed into Stovepipe Wells. We got showers and pools time. It great after five days on the road to stop and get a shower. We drove back to the campsite and cooked dirtbag chili for dinner. One sweet potato, three carrots, one can of refried beans, 1/2 cup quinoa, one can of corn, and a whole lot of love. Add salsa and hot sauce at will. We waited for Ryan to come stumbling in at sundown. He did. Mike and I were a bit worried after he did not answer the radio that day. We went to sleep with full belly's. It rained again that night.
Day VI: 11th of January, 2017
We woke up and had coffee with our neighbor Izzy, from California. She had an old stove from the 1940's. It was an old coleman stove. She also had an air press, which was kind of like a french press. We ate Biscotti and chocolate together. We drank good coffee. Then she and Mike decided to go for a hike to see a crater somewhere in the hills. I elected to be dropped off at Stovepipe Wells at the gas station to meditate, write, read and relax. Izzy's car was a minivan with a mountain bike, a road bike and a sleeping bag in the back. She wore the dirtbag lifestyle well. Tonight we plan to hike into the dunes after the sun goes down, and lookup at he boundless night sky above.
Ryan and I hiked out into the sand dunes under a nearly full moon. We both decided we would go out to the highest sand in sight which was quite a ways away, and over undulating sand dunes. We set out. Ryan wore my Indiana Jones hat and went barefoot. I wore Chacos and socks. We used the bright moonlight to guide us out into the dunes. It was a long way and neither of us had brought any water. We had quite a trippy time trying to judge terrain and distances between points in the moonlight. As well as the lines in the sand creating an optical illusionary experience. We wandered across cakes of hardened mud, and walked by many big dry bushy black plants. At one point Ryan mentioned, "Why does anyone need drugs when you have nature?" That seemed like a totally logical thought. We walked continually for quite a while. After following the "ridge line" of several sand dunes we ended up on top of the highest one in sight.
After resting, I pulled out my native american flute on top of the dune. I proceeded to play for a bit, and had quite a magical time with the nearly full moon overhead. We did not stay long. We headed back down the dune, Ryan rolled down and part ways up the dune next to ours. Ryan shouted at me, "Which direction!?" I yelled back, and as I did, another wanderer came over the top of the dune that I was on. He asked if we were trying to measure something. I told him, "No. We're just wandering around". We headed back towards the parking lot. Mike had the lantern sitting on top of the car to give us a point to find him by. He had taken a large log and stuck it upright in the in the sand on top of a dune bordering the parking lot. Mike said that he could hear the flute and that the coyotes had responded. Who would have thought that I would end up playing a flute on top of the highest sand dune in Death Valley? And that the coyotes would respond?
That night we cooked several cans of soup out of the back of my Subaru Outback under a nearly full moon.
Day VII: 12th of January, 2017
It was the first night that wasn't all that windy. All three of us, Mike, Ryan and I, were tired. We slept without the constant sound of wind through the tent fly. Once we woke up in the morning, we tore down our tents and packed the car. We had a huge breakfast and cooked the rest of our food. We said goodbye to Izzy, Marley and Mike. We headed down the road to the Furnace Creek visitor center, and there Mike tried to mail some postcards to no avail, and we walked down to Furnace Creek resort. They had a post office there, and I went and checked out the golf course while Mike mailed his cards. After that we headed out the south end of the park. Along the way we hit up Devil's Golf Course, which was an amazing array of unique salt formations that spanned most of the south side of Death Valley. They stretched as far as the eye could see, and farther.. literally...
That was definitely a spiritual moment of mine on the trip and I would love to go back to that place and meditate in the vast open land.
We headed down the road to Badwater Basin which is the lowest place on the continent of North America at -282 feet below sea level and sinking due to erosion. There Mike and I walked out into the valley on the man-flattened salt road. We checked out the Badwater pool near the sign which was filled with salty water.
Meanwhile, Ryan had decided to climb the cliff up to the sea level sign 282 feet on a cliff above. People watched and gawked and took photos as he climbed. They scolded him on being stupid and irresponsible. We scolded him on being stupid and irresponsible when returned with my keys to the Subaru. We finally really did head out the south end of the park.
Flashback: --- Earlier that day, we had been up to Zabriske Pointe. The road rose a few hundred feet above the valley. It was an area of colorful badlands. The actual point was a quarter mile or so up the paved path. I went that direction. Mike and Ryan headed up a less traveled hill next to it. It was a steep overlook. We waved at each other across the vast expanse. They came running down afterwards like adolescent monkeys.
As we headed out of the park, I took a few videos and we listened to NASA podcasts. Then we exited the park into Southern California. One of the towns we went through was called Parump, NV which was this absolutely enormous spread out town.
It was getting late and we needed a place to sleep. No one was up for camping because of the cold rain that fell. Eventually we decided to drive to St. George and stay in a hotel called the Coranado. When I checked in, the attendant asked the people in front of me if they were locals. "We charge local an extra $50," she said. "That's because we've had problems with partiers in the past." First of all, why would you admit to being a local if they charge an extra $50? That left me wondering..
Despite the negative start, the place was fine, and the room was a suite with two queen beds and a couch. It also included a kitchen. The total price was $51 which we split three ways. Score!
Day VIII: 13th of January, 2017
After rolling out of bed we headed down to breakfast and stuffed ourselves. We checked out and were on our way to Zion National Park around 10 am.
Upon arriving in Zion I wa astounded by the colors of the rock, and the abundant waterfalls.
.... To be continued at a later date...
Nick Whittemore
16th January, 2017
