a trip to death valley, part 3 - hiking golden canyon and gower gulch in the hottest part of the day

This post is part of a series. To read the first post, click here. To see more Death Valley photos, click here.

I opened my eyes to find I was sweltering in my sleeping bag, too hot to move. My eye mask was stuck to my face with perspiration. What time was it? Only 8 am, but it seemed much later. The temperature was already high, approaching 90, and the sunlight blazed with no trees to filter it. Despite the windows, my Tent Cot had become a sauna. I thrashed my way out of it and lurched towards the RV, and coffee.

Due to the heat, the sunlight, and the weirdness of the terrain, I never fully awoke that day, despite the extra strength of my coffee. I sensed that I didn't need to wake up, that it wouldn't be possible anyway. I was reminded of summers in South Carolina and the mental tricks necessary for living there without air conditioning. The most important trick: adopt a pose of submission, never expecting a victory over the temperature. Keep on moving within the boundaries set by torpor. Such methods had not been required of me in years, but they came right back to me now in Death Valley. 

We drove to Golden Canyon for our first real hike in the park. By the time we parked there, the hottest part of the day was approaching. This was not the ideal hour for walking in the desert or taking pictures. Everything looked washed out by the fierce sunlight, and effort was required just to take regular breaths in this hot, dry air. But the trail was short, and other visitors kept arriving to try it out, so we knew we would probably survive.

This was the point in the trip where I first began to understand a bit about the geological history of Death Valley. Hiking Golden Canyon means starting out on an alluvial fan that is thought to hold material washed down from the Panamint Mountains. Then you cross over onto the bed of an ancient lake. You can tell about the alluvial fan because of the poorly sorted conglomerate in the canyon walls, a sign of materials carried by floodwater. You can tell about the ancient lake because of the fine-grained sediment, typical of a lake bottom. The different between the two areas is quite obvious. There is almost no vegetation to hide the shapes and textures of the materials here, so walking around means you can read the geological history of the area in the visible surface of the Earth itself. I found this very satisfying. The valley stopped seeming empty and barren and started looking like a picture book with snapshots of the past. 

I took many, many photos. It was impossible to resist when every few feet something changed in the composition of the walls and floor of the canyon, or some new jagged frame of cliff-top rocks surrounded the blue, blue sky. These variations would not necessarily be noticeable to me later when I looked at the photos, I was sure. You're gonna end up throwing away about ninety percent of these, I told myself. I couldn't even fully see what I was capturing of most of the time; the light was so bright that it flooded my viewfinder and rendered me dizzy.

Taking pictures on this hike made the sensation of being overheated even more intense. I often felt like I was going to keel over when I hefted that heavy Canon 24-70L lens. This was hard work, and maybe pointless in this overly bright light, but I didn't let up. I was enjoying myself. It was fun to dive into the heat and let it carry me away, let it raise me to the temperature of the gravel under my feet. Focusing on pieces of this scene made me feel non-human, a part of the geology. I photographed rocks until I became a rock myself. The day was wrapping me in a spell of dusty incalescence.

At the end of the first half of the Golden Canyon hike, we had the option of turning back or continuing on to Red Cathedral. Bev turned back. Sundari and I kept going. The day had reached its hottest point. The red rocks towered above us, their color bold against that brilliant clear sky. These red cliffs are taller than the surrounding yellow hills because they are made of stronger stuff, less likely to be disintegrated by rain. I found it hard to imagine rain ever happening here, let alone shaping the landscape so dramatically, but that's exactly how it works at Death Valley: water is the sculptor.

We climbed a gradual slope, then some steeper ones, to reach this red destination. We found that it did in fact have a sacred cathedral feeling to it, when viewed up close. Standing inside a central slot canyon, next to the tallest cliffs, I was amazed by how much relief was provided by even this small bit of shade.

Red Cathedral is a turnaround point. Once in there, you can't go any further forward. Well, you can, but it takes some steep climbing. We hiked back to the Golden Canyon trail, and saw that other possible trails awaited us, if we still had any energy left to walk in this afternoon furnace weather. Were we up for the 4-mile Gower Gulch Loop trail? We knew that Bev was most likely relaxing in the RV at the Golden Canyon parking lot, with a book and a wonderful view. We had plenty of time to sweat our way across more harsh terrain.

The turnoff from Golden Canyon trail to Gower Gulch trail was far from apparent, but we found it anyway. I was glad we'd decided to take this trail when we began climbing up a hill to a view that called out like an ardent lover to my wide-angle lens. The Red Cathedral had welcomed my wide-angle lens a few minutes before, but Manly Beacon went much further, embracing it passionately. (With a name like Manly Beacon, it would have to, right?) Sundari darted ahead of me, quick on her feet without heavy photo equipment to weigh her down. I shot furiously to capture the odd perspective created by her form on this trail next to this giant rock outcropping.

The photo below was just what I'd been hoping for when I first anticipated visiting Death Valley. Big, bare rocks, tall and imposing, dwarfing a human figure, with a winding trail in view. A scene to create a sense of vertigo and isolation, that was what I'd wanted, and now I had it. I wasn't sure how great my photos of the rest of the canyon would be, but I could tell right away I was going to love these shots.  

It took some struggling on that hot day to reach the highest point on the trail, but once we got there, the scenery was incredible. We looked out over the badlands near Zabriskie Point, what used to be the bottom of Lake Manly (named after famous Death Valley explorer William Manly). I was weak and overheated at that point, and could barely hold the camera steady. We passed another photographer who had a monopod attached to his camera and I wished I had one of my own. I was still high on my Manly Beacon photos, though, and didn't mind so much letting the badlands view go undocumented. Soon we were walking downhill again, into Gower Gulch wash. By this time, we'd hiked nearly five miles at the absolute wrong time of day. I felt like I was dreaming, I was so warm. Is this heat exhaustion? I wondered.

Down in the wash, we were enclosed again by rock, with no clear view of where we were headed. We passed tunnels and caves, and rocks lodged by floodwaters in impossible places. We stopped to rest wherever we saw any shade at all. Our packs grew lighter as we gulped down water, but even with less weight to carry, I felt like I was swimming through sludge. I had no sense of how much longer we'd be on this trail, and hoped we were heading in the right direction. 

The landscape was gradually changing, with more loose gravel appearing, somewhat like what we'd seen at the Golden Canyon trailhead, only differently colored. It was obvious we were reaching the edge of an alluvial fan. When we got to the dry waterfall we'd read about in the trail guide, we knew we were almost done with our hike. This dryfall is the remnant of floodwaters rushing down through canyons into the valley, one of numerous dryfalls that occupy canyons in the park. It creates a 25-foot dropoff, which you can climb down if you have the desire to climb things. Or you can take the trail next to it and wind around the falls, while imagining water rushing through this unlikely spot, as we did.

Facing a dryfall in the heat of the day in such a waterless setting is strange, especially when you don't know much about the geology of the land around you. I didn't understand then how a place with no water could have such strong evidence of relatively recent water. I later learned that the soil in the valley is too dry to absorb water as it rushes by during rainstorms. These canyons become perfect channels for rushing water, almost as if they were made of cement. The power of these floods is tremendous; they carry along enormous loads of rock and soil from the mountains. So it's no surprise to see a dry waterfall of this size, knowing what blasts of water and rock have come this way over the years.

These are not all ancient changes to the landscape, either. Much sculpting has happened quite rapidly and recently. I was amazed to learn, long after this trip, that a paved road once ran through Golden Canyon. It was washed out by floods in 1976. I never would have imagined such a thing while walking in the canyon that day. I assumed that ground this dry would long for the rain, would accept it and soak it in, but no. This place sends water hurtling along to the valley, where it evaporates in the arid air. During its rare visits, the water is free to tear up roads and float giant boulders along to locations miles away, to carve out new cliffs and falls.    

The sun was no longer straight overhead as we wound our way around the dryfall . I felt ever so slightly less hot now. On one side of us lay the expanse of the valley. On the other side, the outer walls of the canyon world we'd just explored. We staggered along, ready to sit down and not move for a long time, desperate to take off our socks.

What exultation there was when the trailhead parking lot and our blessed RV finally came into view! We reached it and collapsed into it, removing hats and refilling water bottles while Bev told us of her comfortable afternoon reading fiction and chatting with other park visitors. I am not going to do this again, I told myself. I'm NOT going to hike in Death Valley in the middle of the day. But I'm glad I did it this time.

Much later, when I looked at my pictures, I discovered that the two lenses I'd used on that hike had performed admirably, even in light that I'd thought would make everything seem flat. The Sigma 10-20 and the Canon 24-70L both rendered scenes beautifully. The Sigma actually benefited from that bright light. Its shots are too soft when it's wide open; they're sharpest at the narrowest possible aperture, a setting I almost never get to use except for in this kind of situation. The Canon 24-70L lens astonished me with its perfect colors and especially its rendering of shadow gradients. Lesser lenses tend to lose depth in such strong overhead light, but not the 24-70. It was this trip to Death Valley that taught me to love that lens. (Just typing all of this makes me want to go use the 24-70 right now, or at least hold it and whisper sweet nothings to it.)