We're In the Wrong Mountains | Cottonwoods #1

Winter. You will never hear me share my love for winter in the Pacific Northwest. Here, during the period of the year that lasts from the end of the September until the beginning of July, it is gray, dark, and damp.

Still - for the last seven years - I find myself looking forward to the season. Winter, for me, signals the time of year for trips to Death Valley. A vast wonderland of exploration that - every time I visit - seems to reveal additional secrets and endless ideas for future adventures.

After 20 trips to this spectacular place, we're headed for an area of the park we've never visited before. There, hikes await through glorious canyons, and to some of Death Valley's uncontested gems. One - a long, rugged, and isolated canyon - tumbles from pine woodlands and Joshua trees down through tight polished narrows with falls and beautiful fossils to finally open up at the top of its massive fan overlooking the valley. Another - one of those summits that takes you by surprise - but a short but steep ascent over scenic open desert graced with Joshua trees, eerie vistas of the Racetrack Valley and Hidden Valley areas, and eye-filling views of central Death Valley. And finally, a wander - through a slickrock canyon - that takes us back in time, that reminds us of those who came before us.

This would be our first real foray into the Canyons of the Cottonwood Mountains.

- - - - -

First though, we'd find ourselves in an entirely different area - in the Grapevine Mountains - hiking deep into the colorful Red Wall Canyon. Or at least, that was the hope. As we entered the park at Furnace Creek, we could barely see across the valley floor.

We'd checked the weather report prior to flying down, but we'd failed to notice that on this particular morning, winds were projected to be brisk, whipping south across the valley floor at 30-40 miles per hour.

We definitely didn't want to be hiking in a raging dust storm.

Luckily, by the time we reached our jumping off point - there would be no trail to follow on this cross-desert journey - we were much further north in the valley. Here, the winds were picking up the first bits of dust that would be carried south, the air unladen with visual particulate.

Out of the road and oriented to soak up the sun we hoped would make an appearance as the day wore on.

The Approach to Red Wall Canyon

As with many canyon hikes in Death Valley, this one began with a long trek - some two miles - up the alluvial fan. The trick in these cases is always to follow the meandering path of a wash, even if it adds a bit of distance to an already long hike. Attempts to decrease the distance by hiking a straight line across the fan are always a mistake, as the undulating terrain becomes torturously tedious.

Halfway to the mouth, the sun finally peaked out from behind the clouds, bathing the hillside in color.

After 45 minutes, we'd nearly reached the beginning of the canyon.

Entering Red Wall Canyon just before 9:30am, we were immediately enveloped by brilliantly layered walls that rose high above our heads. It is this initial experience upon entering these passages that seems to cause us to catch our breath, even if we know that we'll soon encounter dramatic narrows winding their way through the mountain.

Wowed by walls.

Across the valley, the alluvial fan of Dry Bone Canyon spilled out of the Cottonwood Mountains.

The First Narrows

The first narrows started about half a mile up beyond the mouth of the canyon. Here, two pillars formed a portal through which the gravelly wash spilled out toward the valley. And, for the half mile after that, an unevenly narrow corridor wound beneath high walls, rising as sheer and flat as sandstone cliffs. Dolomite and limestone, these walls were stained by oxides and are the namesake of Red Wall canyon. This tight stretch gradually deepened, before running headlong into a 25-foot dry fall, blocked by a giant chockstone.

A portal to a colorful display.

Folded rock.

Red walls.

Knowing that we may need to backtrack and bypass the first massive dry fall, we worked our way through the narrows at a reasonably quick pace. With 11 miles to cover by the time we returned to the Tacoma, the 45-minute bypass would have been doable - if just barely - should we not find some way to scale the obstacle.

We were thrilled to find a rope - in good condition - that allowed us to quickly climb both levels of this impressive structure.

King of the chockstone.

From there, the narrows continued to wind their way higher. Blue-gray walls contrasted spectacularly with radiant red. Fingers reached out into the wash. Passageways wove to-and-fro through tight twists and turns. Around every corner, amazement.

Bright from the dark.

Climbing toward the light.

A narrow dance.

Reflected light.

These narrows are carved out of dolomite. Wildly shattered, brecciated, and folded, this ancient stone bears witness to the tumultuous geological past of the Grapevine Mountains. Rock walls have been worn by water into colorful, folded mosaics. Layers of gravel have been deposited - then washed away again - exposing a severely deformed strata.

An ever-changing environment.

A completely natural yonic fertility symbol. Had this been found by Native American Indians, it surely would have been embellished.

The Second Narrows

Still energized by the first narrows, we soon entered the second. Like the first, colorful red walls were deeply undercut and hollowed out to form cavities in the stone, a indicator of the raw power that pulses through these parts.

Looking back towards the valley from the entrance to the second narrows.

Anticipation.

Gravelled alcove.

Undercut passageways.

Colorfully out of place.

Afternoon glow.

 

Red Wall Canyon was formed along a minor fault. As the two facing rock surfaces along a fault slip past each other during tectonic activity, they gouge into each other parallel grooves called slickensides. The most conspicuous slickenside is on the south wall just above the wash, in a left bend about 0.3 mile into the second narrows. This bright red, smooth wall is covered with fine horizontal grooves and dark, glazed and polished streaks, created when it ground against the huge block leaning against it on the right. In the mountains of Death Valley, motion along fault lines is usually vertical, but here it is horizontal. This type of fault is called a strike-slip.

Hiking Death Valley

The Third Narrows

Not as narrow or deep as the first two, the entrance to the third narrows provided the perfect spot for lunch. Here - perched on a few rocks strewn along the floor of the wash - we munched on @mrs.turbodb's turkey sandwiches and tossed fistfuls of Fritos into our faces as we gazed up and down the canyon, the Cottonwood Mountains peaking out to the east as the Grapevines rose tall in the west.

Having gained nearly 3,000 feet of elevation as we climbed the alluvial fan and first two narrows, we had a surprisingly good view across the northern reaches of Death Valley to the Cottonwood Mountains.

Pinnacle-like formations peppered the sheer face of the Grapevine Mountains beyond the third narrows.

Beyond the third narrows, and time to turn around.

Back Down Through Colorful Passageways

By the time we reached the apex of our hike - some six miles and four hours after leaving the Tacoma to fend for itself along Scotty's Castle Road - it was coming up on 12:30pm and we were way ahead of schedule.

Generally, I plan for our hiking pace to average just about 1mph. While we rarely move at such a slow pace, my incessant stops - to futz with the camera, pull rocks out of my shoe, or just to marvel at the colors around us - tend to impede our forward progress by at least half, and I find that it's always better to end up with a little extra time at the end of a hike than it is to return in the dark.

(Not that there's anything wrong with returning in the dark, he says, foreshadowing future hikes on the very same trip. )

Still, we were glad to have been a little faster than we'd expected, and we hoped that the return trip might even be a bit quicker, allowing us just more than an hour to race our way to a camp site that I'd been meaning to visit - but hadn't ever gotten around to - for several years.

"I'm going to try to refrain from taking any photos on the way back down," I said to @mrs.turbodb as we approached the top of the third narrows. "I already got plenty of photos on the way up."

"Right," she replied.

A few hundred feet later, I was framing the first shot.

Dark and light.

The orange wall.

Scale.

Can I interest you in some zebrastone?

We managed to keep a reasonably good pace despite my insistence on photographing a place we'd just walked through, not an hour earlier. My excuses - should I have needed some - were that the light had changed, and that we were looking down-canyon rather than up, but excuses are exactly what those would have been. The truth is that I just can't help myself.

Which is why I didn't do any better as we entered the top of the first narrows, either.

A mountain's memory of rushing water.

Passageways.

Polished dolomite.

Darkness to bright.

Racing into the Cottonwoods

After a long descent down the alluvial fan, we arrived back at the Tacoma at 2:40pm - one hour and fifty-nine minutes before sunset. After folding up the solar panels - we'd generated just more than 200W of power, enough to keep the fridge satisfied and the batteries topped off while we were gone - we pushed north and west toward Ubehebe Crater, where we aired down for the push toward Hidden Valley.

After 45 minutes, and still before sunset, we passed this recognizable landmark.

Through the colorful layers of Lost Burro Gap.

Racing along Hunter Mountain Rd, we made it through Hidden Valley in record time. The silt pit - notorious for swallowing a fair number of vehicles each year - was no more than three inches deep and dry, rendering it dusty but harmless as we left it in our rear-view mirror.

We had no time to waste as we raced the sun toward camp; I'd consumed our entire buffer in my dallying through the narrows. I pressed the skinny pedal as we climbed toward 6,600 feet and our home for the night.

Surely we have time for one shot of the evening glow over the Cottonwood Mountains.

We arrived in camp 15 minutes after the sun dropped below the horizon. On the edge of light enough for a photo, I raced through the chilly air in search of high ground. I'd have more time in the morning to compose a shot that included some well-known features visible from this site, but for the moment it was all about speed and high ISO settings on the camera.

Not wanting to wait too long, I snapped the first photo almost before the door shut behind me.

Dodging yucca, cholla, Joshua trees, and mesquite, I pushed further and further from our overlook. My quick pace and frantic state of picture-taking were the only things keeping my mind off of temperatures that - put nicely - were not warm. I'd realize this as I trudged back to the Tacoma after snapping a few shots from a small bluff a quarter mile away - and couple hundred feet above - our ridgeline perch.

Promatory view.

Our first day in the park had been a full one, and as we found ourselves camped overlooking the southern end of the Cottonwood Mountains, we knew the following day - Thanksgiving - would bring even more excitement as we pushed further into the canyons of the Cottonwoods.

The Whole Story

 

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