Death Valley: Three Million Acres of Weird
“There’s something going on,” said one ghost hunter who is holding a device meant to find electromagnetic fields. Sure enough, it’s going wild. And while I don’t believe in ghosts, I have goose bumps.
Death Valley National Park doesn’t need a lot of help being spooky. One of the lowest, most arid places on earth, the valley has more ghost towns than actual ones: dried-up spots like Leadfield, Chloride City and Skidoo, whose last residents skedaddled as soon as the gold, or rumor thereof, was gone.
Even the places that survive have foreboding names like Furnace Creek or haunted reputations like Death Valley Junction, just outside the park’s eastern gate, where paranormal fans convene to hunt the spirits of miners, mistresses and other metaphysical outliers. Then there are anomalies like the park’s Racetrack Playa, where rocks seemingly slide across sand under their own power.
Death Valley’s mysteries and its extremes have always intrigued me. So earlier this year, I made the pilgrimage to this three million acre expanse on the California - Nevada border, following the footsteps of unknown numbers of old-time prospectors and oddballs.
Part of the draw for me (and, no doubt, for the countless others who visit each year) is the valley’s remoteness and the peculiar air of excitement that being in such a lonely locale can inspire. Forget about being lost at sea; I’ve rarely felt more isolated than I did in Death Valley, whose eastern tip is some 75 miles (as the buzzard flies) west of Las Vegas . Yet, despite its name and foreboding reputation, what I found was a place teeming with pockets of life, from tough tortoises to equally hardy tourists.
Death Valley may show its age — in millions of years, mind you, not centuries — but it continues to lure loners looking for quiet, and artists looking for inspiration in the austere landscape.
Last January, the temperatures were less frightening than Death Valley’s summertime triple-digits, and it was then I decided to visit, assured that I would neither melt nor dematerialize. In Las Vegas, where I rented a car, the agent, asking where I was headed, upgraded me from a midsize sedan to an S.U.V., something I would later bless him for as I crawled through one of the park’s narrow, rock-strewn mountain passes. (Its regular roads are just fine.) Over two days, I would cover a couple hundred miles, driving past steep sand dunes, volcanic craters, jagged salt flats and snowcapped peaks that drop into red-rock canyons.
Death Valley Petroglyphs - News
More Photos » By JESSE McKINLEY IT'S just before midnight on the edge of Death Valley and I'm standing in a dark room in the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel with five people who are certain that we're talking to ghosts. “There's something going on,”
There were petroglyphs on the rocks and we were looking at them. The petroglyphs were of people hunting deer, bees, spirits, and a deer with what looked like a human head. My mom took a picture of me standing by the bee petroglyphs.
Petroglyph Paradise – The Volcanic Tablelands of Bishop ...
The Eastern Sierras of California is a paradise for photographers and nature lovers alike. From the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine where classic Westerns were filmed, to the old ghost mining town of Bodie just south of Bridgeport, the Highway 395 corridor has it all. A favorite vacation spot of mine is the Owens Valley town of Bishop, centrally located near spectacular attractions such as the Bristlecone Pine Forest, Death Valley, Mammoth Lakes, Manzanar, the White Mountains, Mono Lake, and much more. Bishop lies beneath the Inyo National Forest, along the Owens River just east of The Buttermilks, a well-known bouldering destination populated with volcanic tuff and granite rocks. Bishop is also the location of Mountain Light Gallery, which houses the work of the late, internationally renowned wilderness photographer and rock climber Galen Rowell – perhaps one of the best landscape photographers of all time.
Just north of Bishop lies the Volcanic Tablelands, another rock climbing paradise. According to the Bureau of Land Management Bishop field office, the Volcanic Tablelands is a vast volcanic landscape that was formed over 700,000 years ago by materials spewing from the Long Valley caldera, located to the northwest. In this arid, high desert landscape, the Paiute-Shoshone Indians once resided, leaving behind an extensive collection of perfectly chiseled petroglyphs in the rocks. As someone who has always been attracted to Native American Indian art and culture, the Volcanic Tablelands are high on my list of favorite petroglyph sites to visit and photograph.
Just where are these petroglyphs located? Actually all around the Volcanic Tablelands and neighboring Chalfant Valley off Highway 6. However, there are several areas where the petroglyphs are concentrated: Chidago Canyon, Fish Slough, Chalfant Valley, and Red Canyon. Unfortunately, due to disrespectful vandalism and defacing problems, these beautiful petroglyph sites are no longer marked. I was fortunate to speak with a staff member at the Bishop Chamber of Commerce who pointed me in the right direction. He understood, being a photographer himself. You can also check at the Bishop BLM field office or White Mountains ranger station for assistance, where you may or may not get directions. These two photographs were taken in Chidago Canyon and Fish Slough and converted to black and white. One has a canvas texture overlay added. The images are titled “Secret Story” and “Another Secret Story,” apt titles I feel. Hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed visiting and photographing the petroglyphs.