Meeting Matthew | Deja Vu #1

Five years ago now, I received an email that began thusly. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

I just wanted to drop a quick line to say howdy. I only recently stumbled across your site and felt a bit of deja vu. I'm a photographer and I've spent the last 3-4yrs exploring the western side of North America in my 1998 Taco (with 400k miles on her!) and have been to a lot of the same amazing places you have. Luckily, you've been to a lot of places I haven't as well and given me some great inspiration. It seems we have a similar passion for finding out of the way places and interesting historic & pre-historic sites.

Death Valley has become something of an obsession for me. I've spent 2-3mo there each of the last 3 winters and we almost certainly must have crossed paths at some point. lol. I've driven most of its legal roads and done over 60 hikes and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface there. I had thought I'd found most of the best petroglyphs in the park, but your website actually turned me on to the ████████████████ canyon. It's great to know there's still more out there to discover. And (unless you're holding certain locations back from your website) there's several stunning places in DV that you guys have yet to discover. Haha.

Since then, Matthew @Beardilocks and I have sporadically traded emails, sharing an amazing place one of us had found, fishing for hints to a place that we hadn't, and laughing as we repeatedly missed each other in similar locations by mere hours.

Now, finally, we've gotten our acts together - just enough, which is asking a lot - for a meet up in our favorite National Park. The plan - to the extent we have one - is to wander our way from Eureka to Saline Valley, climbing into the Saline Range in search of the unknown.

I wonder what it'll be like to meet myself, and hear stories of all the places I've gone, but just a little bit different.

- - - - -

I got into Las Vegas early and I was on my way to the northern reaches of Death Valley National Park by 2:30pm. Rather than the usual two-hour journey, it'd take a little more than six hours to reach the south end of Eureka Valley. It'd be dark when I rolled into camp to meet Matthew, and I'd have to wait until morning to catch my first glimpse of the dunes.

Even at night, the route through Crankshaft Junction and Crater was dramatic.

Rolling into camp just after 9:00pm, Matthew - already squared away in his truck - climbed out for introductions and for a bit of chit-chat before we agreed on an approximate go-time the following morning and each headed to bed for the evening.

The following morning...

The last time I'd been to Eureka Valley was in 2022 - when I was able to provide a small tug to a fellow explorer - and the little slice of paradise in which I camped was a spot he'd recommended to me in the days following. A little out of the way - so devoid of the crowds that can develop in the dry camp - it provided a fantastic view of the dunes, which I was up early to enjoy.

Morning at Crater Camp.

Thrilled to be back on sandy ground, I had about an hour to burn before Matthew and I had agreed to get going. Ample time to go investigate the "crater" for which the camp had been named, I wandered out of camp and soon found myself a half-mile further up the alluvial fan, looking down over the crater, the entire valley unfolding into the distance.

Above the "crater," which is probably an enormous flow of fan debris from the Last Chance Range.

Following the perimeter of the flow, I inspected several interesting outcroppings before noticing that another human was wandering around a Land Cruiser between my Tacoma and the entrance to Dedeckera Canyon. It was - apparently - time to get going!

I returned to camp as quickly as I could, stowed the tent, and made my way up to the wash that Matthew had nestled into the night before. As he enjoyed his morning coffee, I poured myself a bowl of Wheat Chex and we discussed our plan for the day.

In the years since he'd initially reached out, Matthew has spent an order of magnitude more time in the park than I have. The man is lucky enough to call it home for a big part of the winter, and is certainly one of the more knowledgeable folks on the region these days. Still, being a solo traveler, he'd never been through Dedeckera Canyon. Having heard stories of the narrow steps, and not having the luxury of an easy way to fix up his home should something go wrong, he'd simply utilized alternate routes between Saline and Eureka Valley. Until today.

A new sight in the side-view mirrors.

On the other hand, I've been through Dedeckera perhaps six or eight times - in both directions - and after quickly realizing that the stories were a smidge overblown on my very first trip, I've thoroughly enjoyed the twisty route every single time.

It was a pleasure to accompany a new friend through this little part of the park he hadn't experienced.

Looks tighter than it is for our narrow trucks.

Climbing the steps into a Kaleidoscope of color.

Ultimately, the canyon was in the tamest shape I've ever experienced. Even the uppermost step - usually 18-24-inches tall and sporting a pile of stacked rocks from those in less capable vehicles - had been filled in by recent rains, the gravels of the wash resulting in a climb of less than 6 inches. I was almost a little disoriented when I called out "I think that was the last one," over the radio, a little disappointed that I was definitely unnecessary in helping Matthew through the canyon.

Climbing toward Steel Pass, I wanted to make a quick stop at some wind caves that @mrs.turbodb and I thought were cool when we drove through the first time. However, we were mere desert newbs at that point, and I'm not sure we'd even seen our first petroglyph on an adventure. Conversly, many of Matthew's explorations these days are in search of habitation, hunting, and rock art sites of the Native Americans who called this place home, and I hoped we might add an entirely new layer to my understanding of this particular spot.

Wind cave, and wave.

Dinosaur skull cave.

These rocks were placed here by someone, but there wasn't enough evidence to say - with certainty - who.

On our way toward Steel Pass.

In all of our explorations, neither of us have done much in the Saline Range, so Matthew had hatched a plan - I'd told him that I was happy to follow anywhere he wanted to go - to work our way down an enormous drainage between Steel Pass and Eureka Valley, and then back to the trailhead via an adjacent bench. It sounded like a great idea to me, and soon we were pulling the trucks off the road again, readying ourselves for the unknown.

The head of Steel Pass Major Drainage.

We hoped to cover something close to five miles on the hike, but with no beta on what to expect, we had no idea if we would be out for a few hours, or if we'd run into a dry fall - hidden in the shadows of satellite imagery - and be back to our trucks in a matter of minutes. Not that hanging out along the Steel Pass corridor would be a hardship on a Wednesday morning; it is, after all, an exciting place to be.

As we gathered up our things, this f-18 roared by overhead.

Wing wave.

Caught in a halo.

Still, we weren't here - this time, at least - for the air show, and soon we were working our way into what quickly seemed to be a very interesting canyon!

Colorful corridor.

Captivating rocks.

Only a quarter mile or so into our journey - as the tortured walls crept closer to the gravel that lined the way - we reached the first dry fall. Luckily, after a quick peek over the edge, we determined that it would be reasonably easy to both descend and climb, should run into another, larger fall, further down-canyon.

At this point, we were so distracted by the rocks around us that we hadn't even noticed the quickly approaching drop.

An easily negotiated 20-foot wall.

Ultimately the remainder of the canyon - at least as far as we'd take it on this particular morning, and from what we could see, all the way to the Eureka Dunes - was tame. Winding between worn, layered walls, our heads were constantly swiveling one way or another to take it all in.

Layer cake.

Folds of the Saline Range.

As part of planning the loop, there were only a couple places where it seemed that the slope of the canyon walls was shallow enough for us to make an escape and gain the bench to our south. This wasn't entirely necessary - we could have simply retraced our path, or continued into Eureka Valley and hoped that another adventurer would shuttle us back to our trucks - but there was rumor of an obsidian source somewhere along the bench, which was right up Matthew's alley, and something I'd never encountered before.

So, wondering if the not-as-shallow-in-person slope was passable, we started up.

White Mountain view.

As we gained elevation, Eureka Dunes began to peek out below.

A good sign, this obsidian flake has been worked!

The higher we got, the more colorful the Last Chance Range became.

One of the nice things about meeting someone new - at least, when they are likeable - is that there's plenty to talk about. And so, getting to know each other, we related various hikes and explorations, some to places we'd both visited, some to places the other hadn't ever seen. As we did, one foot fell in front of the other, our eyes scanning the ground for what seemed like endless obsidian. Before we knew it, we reached the edge of the bench top, the steep slope robbed of its difficulty by camaraderie.

And then, as we gazed out over the canyon below us, a renewed roar.

A pair of F-18s climbed directly above us and over the Saline Range. The artwork on the tail was enough to tell us that the lead plane was an XE-111 F/A-18E VX-9 "Vampires" out of NAS China Lake.

Gleaming dunes.

Hidden Dunes and the snow-covered White Mountains.

Even up here, the obsidian continued. It followed a winding drainage, the ground only a few yards out of the wash devoid of the glassy black material. Most of the pieces were small and worn smooth by years of exposure to the wind and rain, but some were much larger - the size of a football - an indicator that the source might be nearby.

I really liked this piece of tuff that had obsidian embedded in it. (left) | Two more worked pieces. (right)

The obsidian wasn't the only special find. This fishhook cactus was a nice surprise!

Ultimately, we did find what we thought was the source. It wasn't a huge inclusion of obsidian but rather a high concentration of smaller pieces embedded in a conglomerate of volcanic ash and other materials. And it seemed that we weren't the first ones here - a large depression was evident on the hillside, an indication perhaps of those who relied on this material for survival and trading. A nice confirmation of research for Matthew, and a "Death Valley first" for me.

Our random wander into the Saline Range a success, it was still early afternoon as we started back for the trucks, following an old, inexplicable, miner's trail along the edge of the bench.

Red columns of the Last Chance Range.

Looking down at the route we'd followed a few hours earlier.

The airshow that we'd enjoyed for much of the day continued as we worked our way closer to the flight path. For the first time, I'd brought my new 100-500mm lens on this trip, and I hoped that we'd get back in time so I could put it to use for a final pass or two. Until then, I snapped away with as much zoom as I could muster, the F-18s continuing their low-level dance with the desert.

Along the ridge.

Out of sight.

Nearly there.

Back to the trucks a little after 3:00pm, no more planes would pass overhead, the last of the afternoon's flights already in the books. Of course, we didn't know that at the time, so we kept our eyes peeled as we made our way a bit further south, to the highest point along the Steel Pass road. There, we'd find a nice little spot to call home for the evening, our eyes still glued to the sky until sunset stretched out from the horizon an hour after we arrived.

Steel summit.

Inyo sunset.

An interesting thing about desert rats - I've found - is that the ebb and flow of the day seems to follow that of the sun. We get up as it rises and retire to our sleeping arrangements as darkness settles over the land. It's a simple way of life, but one that feels natural in a place like this.

And so, after each prepping our own tortilla-and-guacamole-based meals - tacorittos for me, and a bean+cheese quesadilla for Matthew - we chatted for only a few minutes before making plans to hike another couple of canyons the following morning and signing off for the night.