Death Valley - Part III

After adventuring to the Keane Wonder Mine, we spent the afternoon driving around the northern part of the Valley, hitting one off type of things like the Ubehebe Crater and Scotty's Castle. These are all very cool in of themselves, but after going up to the Keane Wonder Mine, being in a place with tour buses, air-conditioning, kids and blue-haired women, I felt my genitalia shrinking. By this time, it was getting into the early evening, and we planned to go to the Dunes at Stovepipe Wells for sunset.

Back when I was a young lad, I served a stint in Tucson. After five years, my parents must have gotten tired of the 300-days of sun, healthy-living, no-grass cutting, and pool-lounging lifestyle, and picked up and moved to Philadelphia. After a short, but determined investigation by the FBI, I was reunited with them just in time to begin my sophmore year of high school. They said something about sorry about that, yadda yadda, didn't mean to, yadda yadda, wasn't intentional, yadda yadda, had merely forgotten to pack me, yadda yadda. Regardless, we were a family unit again, I would finish my remaining years with under the roof of my domestic overseers in the snow and ice just outside of Valley Forge, PA.

Now, being that I had bought into the perceived higher enlightenment of folks that lived on the East Coast, I thought I was entering a world where I was going to have to expand my mind to the vast experiences my peers had probably gained in their years living in a Blue State. I know it is shocking to think that I confused Philadelphia with enlightenment, however I was going to live the suburbs. I thought the sight at my first day of school, where I saw more BMWs, Mercedes, and Jeep Cherokees in the parking lot than in the entire state of Arizona, was indicative of kids whose parents who had gained much wealth by imploring their vast experiences to driving change in this world, and reaping their benefits to depths a simple Arizona family couldn't fathom. After all, my dad drove an Oldsmobile.

I was correct in that I was a naive 16 year-old that had yet to understand a thing about the real world. When telling them that I was from Arizona, my enlightened new friends astounded me by being amazed that anyone could live in the harsh desert containing nothing but sand-dunes. Some went as far as to believe and say, out-loud, that I must be some kind of desert-rat capable of living for long periods of time without water.

So, walking from the road to the sand-dunes in Death Valley, I realized that this is what my young friends must have pictured in their ginormous imaginations when they saw this new white-kid, with an abnormally golden tan, speak of living in the desert.

If I really was a desert-rat, I'd really have a hard time getting any water out of this:

As we were waiting for the sun to fall onto the other side of the mountains, I thought it would be great to do something silly. You know, something that would make people who read my website think that I have a "zany" streak, and that I know how to "be a little nutty," even in public. Maybe, I thought, people would think I got too much sun. So we contrived this shot:

Take-off and cruising altitude look good.

I held this handstand (in the sand mind you) for about 15-seconds 20-minutes.

Well, thank God for good friends being there to take pictures of you at your best:

Rough landing--forget to put the gear down.

After another hour of running, sliding, and falling down the sandhills, the sun went down, and we headed back to the campsite trying to remove sand out of our orphuses.

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Sleeping the desert is pretty magical. When we were there, the air was so still, you could hear the beetles, ants and scorpions running across the hardened desert floor. You could hear the snakes slithering, the coyotes and bobcates prowling and...

Ok, it's nothing like that. But there is a calm and stillness that embrace you as you stare through the mesh "skylight" in your tent towards to heavens. Before the full-moon popped up, you could see the dust-filled Milky Way sparkle the stars. I really felt as if I was in heaven. I thought about this being the last night under the stars, and how I really feel like I am at home when I'm outside. It was now Easter Sunday, and fitting that all seemed right with the world at that time.

I awoke at sunrise, but lingered in my bag for a few more hours for no reason. We eventually got up, packed-up and gassed the car, grabbed some hot joe and began the trip back to San Francisco. The cool thing about the drive home is that it is just as interesting as being at our destination. I've driven this route so many times, I could do it in reverse with my feet on the steering wheel.

Starting at sea-level, you begin the steady climb up to Owens Valley at 4,000 ft. Breaking through into the Valley, causes a moment of silence as the brooding Sierras stand over you.

Being the consumate tour guide, I surprised my traveling companion with a detour off of 395, up the Whitney Portal to about 6,000 feet to the base of the highest point in the continintal United States, 14,505 ft Mt. Whitney:

The snow on Mt. Whitney is like make-up masking her ferociousness. Facing east, the three distinctive spires that scrape sky stand proud and tall. However, if you ever see the other side, you'll se a gradual sloping grade with a trail that a semi could drive up. If someone has "claimed" to have climbed Mt. Whitney, I suggest you ask them if they took the tourist route up the back, or they went all Michel Diconnet (see DV Part II) and went up the Mountaineers route.

Although John Muir wasn't the first person to summit this monster back in 1873, he was the first to climb the storied Mountaineer's Route, a Class 3 chute that you can see in the pictures running up the right side of the main face. In the first picture, you can see the route he took to the summit.

After taking in the crisp mountain air, we got back into the car and descended to Owens Valley. We drove north heading towards Route 88, the 8,000 ft pass we need to cross to get West of the Sierras into the central valley. The first indication of a rough ride came when the radio DJ in Mammoth (about 2 hours north of our present location), said that it was snowing, and that they expected to get about 2 feet overnight. Looking up, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but that's life during the early spring in the Sierras. By the time we reached Bishop (about an hour north of Whitney) the mountains were covered in clouds.

After passing the exit to Mammoth, the blue skies that absorbed at Whitney were replaced with this:

My experience of learning to drive in the snow and ice in Philadelphia has given me a lot of confidence in this weather. I actually think it is fun driving in the snow. However, CALTRANS does not, as they have to deal with the 25 million other Californians who don't. Once roads get too treacherous, they shut them down. Usually all it takes is some idiot from LA or Marin County driving an SUV at full speed down an icy slope (because, it has 4WD you know) to fly off the road, ending everyone's elses chances at getting home.

The only route we could take home was to go north to Reno, then go West on 80 across North Lake Tahoe, over Donner Pass and into the Central Valley. You can imagine the thrill that overcame me when I realized that our only route home was the same route millions of skiers would be taking to get back to the Bay Area. Millions of people whose ability to drive in the snow is rivaled only by their capacities of rational thought.

After driving on 80 for an hour, we passed the exit to 82-North at Truckee. Not 30 seconds later were we confronted with this:

A parking lot. One that we'd spend the next THREE-AND-A-HALF-FREAKING-HOURS sitting in. The traffic report on the radio said that some knuckleheads slid off the road and caused a multiple car collision somewhere on the other side of Donner Pass. I was elated. Mankind has figured out a way to tame Death Valley, but cannot solve the Bay Area motorist. I was also comforted by the fact that this way probably the last scene the Donner Party saw before they had to eat their own asses:

Finally we moved the 1/2 mile required to get off on 82-South, turned around and headed back to Reno. Two hours later, we'd be in a warm casino, enjoying our first showers in four days.

Our adventure would be over an uneventful half-a-day later. As always, California provides plenty surprises, breathtaking geography, large expanses and adventure at every turn.

I absolutely love this place.

Posted by 10 fingers 6 strings at May 19, 2006 09:22 AM | TrackBack