After lunch at the Furnace Creek Golf Course, we wandered around the area a bit before heading back out to Ridgecrest – we had decided that we didn’t have enough daylight left for any more significant hiking, and we wanted to not drive the rough Panamint Valley road in the dark again, especially with…
After returning to Ridgecrest on Friday night, we decided to head somewhere in the eastern Sierras since we were two hours closer to those destinations than if we’d started from home, yet, after waking up early, we decided to make the return trip to Death Valley instead – there were simply too many things…
After our not-so-inexpensive lunch in Furnace Creek, we had to choose whether or not to continue northward to hike Mosaic Canyon near Stovepipe Wells as originally planned, or to visit Dante’s View, which meant another 17-mile drive southeast of Furnace Creek and additional distance we’d have to make up for the drive back west…
Some 10 miles south of Furnace Creek lies the entrance to Artist Drive, one of the more popular attractions in the park. For nine miles, this one-way road winds its way east, north, then west through the foothills of the Black Mountains, passing through rugged washes and across wide alluvial plains. We didn’t expect…
A couple of miles north of Badwater is a dirt road leading up a gentle grade to one of the many canyons that empty into Death Valley, this one containing a feature known as Natural Bridge. Here, centuries of water runoff through the canyon has hollowed out a passage below more obstinate rock, leaving a…
Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, so we had to pay the place a visit, if for no other reason than simply “because it’s there.” Like so many features of the desert, the relative distance on the map belie the true dimensions between points –…
We had been hearing about the wildflower “superbloom” at Death Valley for a couple of weeks, so we decided to drive out for the weekend and see it for ourselves. The closest hotel room/camp site we could find was in Ridgecrest, some two hours southwest of the main park facilities at Furnace Creek, so we…
Having walked more than 10 miles with the kids at Disneyland the day before, we decided to take a short walk today west down the PCT from Grassy Hollow – we’ve both got new boots and want to break them in a bit. It’s been a few weeks since the west end of Blue…
Circle Mountain was our first hike after purchasing our Wrightwood cabin in 2014, and the steepness of the use trail had deterred us from making a return visit since – that is until Chris got a little stir crazy and decided to do a solo hike today. It’s 1-1/4 miles and 800 vertical feet…
It’s hard to believe this was our first chance to hike together since the Fourth of July, but projects at home and busy weekends have served to significantly limit our hiking opportunities. The stars finally aligned enough to allow us some time to explore the west end of Blue Ridge – we had hiked…