Death Valley and Alabama Hills

Death Valley and Alabama Hills

Winter is certainly the best time to visit Death Valley. Like it’s name portrays, this national park is a stark and desolate place. It is both the lowest place in the United States (282ft, 86 meters below sea level) and has the hottest recorded temperature on earth (56.7 ⁰c in 1913). It is hard to believe people once survived here (retreating into the mountains during summer) and in the 1880’s a company mined borax in the winter months.

We visited in February and the temperatures were mild and pleasant.

Entering the park at the Shoshone entrance we turned off the paved road onto the Furnace Creek Wash track and camped at a remote campsite. The next day we continued to Dante’s View – a lookout high over Badwater (the lowest point) and then descended via a diversion to Twenty Mule Team Canyon and a stop at Zabriskie Point, to the Furnace Creek visitor centre. That night we camped deep in Echo Canyon, with high walls, before leaving early the next morning for sunrise at Badwater. Recent rains meant that a lake had formed over the salt plain and we saw the sunrise with the mountains reflected in the lake.

We later drove Artist Drive to admire the coloured rocks and then walked the very popular Golden Canyon / Gower Gulch hike (9.5 km, 300 m elevation gain) that was quite a challenge. Afterwards we set off towards the Alabama Hills, camping one more night in the park before leaving.

Exiting Death Valley our next stop was Alabama Hills – often used location for films, including Iron Man and Django Unchained. Calling in on the way to find The Joshua Tree as in the U2 Album Cover. It’s long dead, but it’s remains are surrounded with fan’s homages.

Alabama Hills is very picturesque. The hills themselves are made up of piles of small rocks and have a backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We stayed two nights and explored the hills trying to locate the various film sets.

Here is our Django Unchained homage: