Six months earlier, I'd built our very last, late spring trip to Death Valley - with temperatures already climbing into the unbearably hot range for us Pacific Northwesterners - around Greenwater Valley, for a single purpose: to find an unusual rabbit petroglyph that I'd uncovered on the internet. We never found it. That meant that somewhere out there, a rabbit was hiding in plain sight, and while it had eluded us on our last search, we weren't going to be outsmarted a second time by some wascally wabbit! Trailhead-to-trailhead taxi. With only 90 minutes until sunset, we arrived at the…
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Having averaged our usual 1mph - which includes all the time we're stopped for me to take photos and stumble around underground - on our hike in Buckwheat Wash, we had a few hours of daylight remaining when we got back to the Tacoma. That'd be enough to get us to the starting point for our next hike - and hopefully to get dinner made - just before the sun set for the evening. I'd planned to take pavement nearly to the trailhead in the southern end of Death Valley, but when we passed Furnace Creek Wash Rd - which…
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Last spring, on our final trip to Death Valley - and our first time exploring the Backside of the Black Mountains - I mentioned that after every visit to my favorite National Park, I always seem to come away with a longer list of places to see than I had going in. Of course, it happened again. After wandering around the Black Mountains for three full days - which included driving every road in the entire area - and before I'd even posted my stories of the adventure, I knew of several more places that I would take longer to…
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I have no real goal around peak bagging in Death Valley, but something fun just happened, and so now I'm keeping a list. Maybe someday it will become the basis for more. While @mrs.turbodb and I were enjoying our first Fall 2025 trip to Death Valley, I shared with her that we'd be climbing Funeral Peak on the last day of our adventure. Keen to see what Digonnet had to say about the hike, she pulled up Hiking Death Valley on her Kindle and was surprised to find that the hike wasn't listed at all. However, it did mention (highlight…
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Morning along Pine Creek. A quarter mile from the Pine Creek Tungsten Mine, I remained fantastically horizontal for 12 hours while my body recovered from the ordeal of the previous day. As I climbed out of the tent to start my new day, I decided that perhaps I'd overdone things a smidge, and that I should take this as a rest day. Twenty minutes later, I found myself a mile down the road - enjoying a big bowl of Wheat Chex - just outside the Pine Creek Pack Station, as the thump-thump-thump of a helicopter grew louder overhead. Initially unsure…
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For the second time in as many trips, I'd been abandoned. This time, a trip to the Arizona Strip and North Rim of the Grand Canyon was on the books until life got in the way for a few buddies, and as they bowed out, so did @mrs.turbodb. This left me in a bit of a pickle, as I'd left the Tacoma in California at the end of my previous outing, and still needed to ferry it down to Las Vegas for the winter. So, it was back to the computer and a bit of time sorting through the many-lifetime's-worth…
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This is a special place to my Dad, one that he's been visiting for more than 30 years. As such, I've used names we've given to local landmarks or redacted the names of places that might be too revealing. If you recognize any of the places shown in the photos, please help to keep them special by not mentioning their names or locations. For the last eight years, I've spent a few days to a week with my Dad at his favorite camp site in the Sierra National Forest. We didn't think this year would be any different as we…
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Just out of the park. Setup on an old mining road just east of Furnace Creek, our flight home was a little later than usual, so we planned to get a hike in before heading back to Las Vegas. This meant a third morning in a row of awake-before-sunrise, but with early sunsets and bedtimes around 7:30pm, we were still getting more sleep we generally get at home! It'd been a windy night, but our spot - between a hillside and a road berm - had been chosen carefully to reduce wind noise on the tent, and as we shoveled…
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Having discovered the existence of a few rock art sites in the Greenwater Valley area, I put on my best Sherlock Holmes hat (note: it is strikingly similar to the Cal Poly baseball cap I always wear) to scour the interwebs for clues. Of the three sites, I was able to pinpoint one reasonably quickly, and reached out to a few fellow rock art enthusiasts for hints on another. The third - somewhere on the hike up Funeral Peak - was out of the question on this particular trip, though I'll surely return to find those in the future. 2025-11…
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At first glance, Greenwater Valley seems - especially compared to the other valleys of Death Valley National Park - downright boring. In fact, it is. Even its most-visited attraction - Dante's View - is what I would describe as "just OK," if someone asked my opinion, before volunteering several alternative views in the park that I feel are significantly more amazing. Thankfully, few people ask - and even fewer care - for my opinion, and the world continues to spin. Still, it was with great excitement that we entered the southern end of Greenwater Valley on the first evening of…
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Every time I visit Death Valley, I cover some amount of ground. I know this because I fill every daylight hour with hiking, driving, climbing, and poking my head into places that a younger, smarter me would certainly avoid. Somehow, though, at the end of each trip, I realize that my list of places to explore has inexplicably gotten longer. It happens without fail. Every. Single. Time. In 2018 - when @mrs.turbodb and I were exploring the Ibex Dunes and the talc mines near Saratoga and Ibex Spring - I noticed a little valley on the eastern flank of the…
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A few weeks earlier - as we'd thoroughly enjoyed our hike through the upper 7 miles of Bighorn Gorge - we'd known that a return trip through O'Brien Canyon was an option. In fact, based on a description I'd found in what we lovingly refer to as the Death Valley Bible, I'd planned for us to return via this alternate route. The thrilling part of this little-known place is its superb narrows about 2 miles down from the [Silver Crown] mine. For several hundred yards the canyon squeezes through a series of tight passages, shaded underworlds of slick bedrock, faceted…
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The last time we drove White Top Mountain Road - in fact, the only time we've driven White Top Mountain Road - we did so under the cover of darkness. This was no problem - it is, for the most part well-graded - but it did mean that we were unable to experience the surroundings of this unfamiliar part of the park. Having just completed our hike to Ubehebe Peak, we had just about an hour of daylight as we took full advantage of the skinny pedal, a long trail of dust glowing in the evening sun, as we sped…
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From the edge of the Racetrack, an old mining trail climbs to the stark heights of Ubehebe Peak, across rocky slopes sparkling with heavily varnished plutonic rocks. The summit views are awesome, encompassing the Racetrack's eerie mud flats on one side, Saline Valley's deep sink on the other, and many ranges all around. You might find it more difficult to leave than to get there. Hiking Death Valley Depending on who's telling it, Lippincott Pass is either a treacherous, near-death experience or a straightforward shortcut between Saline and Racetrack Valley's, hardly worth a second thought. For us, it has always…
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There's a first time for everything. In all of our adventures, it seems like we're always on the go. I've never really given it much thought - probably because I know there's so much more to see than we ever can - always trying to utilize as many daylight minutes as possible, wherever we happen to be. This trip wasn't going to be any different. I'd planned six hikes over seven days, sure that - even with an extra day - we had more than we could possibly accomplish. Then, our butts were thoroughly cooked on our hike up Tucki…
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On a dark, cold night in January 1952, a distress call went out over Death Valley. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is Air Force 001 bailing out north of Barstow, California,” the official crash report would later read. Soon after, the crew of six jumped out of the CIA's 16-ton, dual-engine, SA-16 Albatross plane into total darkness. The plane - under power of only a single engine and its backdoor hanging open - continued on course for several minutes before scraping a couple of summits. Then, against all odds, landed on its own - with surprisingly little damage - on an…
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For anyone familiar with recent Death Valley weather history, the impact of hurricane Hillary in 2023 will be a memorable event. After 2.2 inches of rain fell in a single day - more than the average annual total of 2.15 inches - nearly every road in the park was closed. Only a few opened within days, and a few more within weeks. Months later, many major thoroughfares were still closed. Today, more 15 months later, nearly all of the roads have been reopened, with the exception of the one we wanted to use to reach our next destination. Exiting Telephone…
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Having enjoyed our peaceful evening in Marble Canyon, our next destination was another that I'd had on my To-Do list for quite some time. Back in 2021, we'd headed up Telephone Canyon to find a remote arch and a couple old mines. We'd driven all the way to the end of the road - or at least, as far as was legal - to a wilderness sign that designated the area beyond as "Foot and Horse Traffic Only," before turning back to spend the night at, and explore, the Tucki Mine. It wasn't the wilderness sign - so much as…
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It was on the final night of our very first trip to Death Valley that we rushed through Cottonwood and Marble canyons, and we haven't been back since. It was largely the popularity of these places that kept me from returning, our preference to spend time in more remote places of the park outweighing the draw of narrows and rock art that Marble Canyon is known for. Still, it was tough to ignore the description of Marble Canyon that constantly caught our attention in Digonnet's Hiking Death Valley, and when we found ourselves with an extra afternoon at the beginning…
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Knowing that we had a huge hike in front of us, we worked our way high into the Cottonwood Mountains after returning from our hike to Leaning Rock just before 6:00pm, already an hour after dark. Having never driven White Top Mountain Road, the circuitous route remained a mystery as we pulled into a spot that we hoped would have a nice view once when the sun completed its circumnavigation of the globe. Even as we set up the tent for the night it was freezing. Luckily, @mrs.turbodb had already prepped sandwiches - at the same time we'd prepped our…
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