Tuesday, May 31
This
day was set aside for roaming the valley, so we got in the car and drove over
to Furnace Creek visitor center and looked around for a bit before continuing
on to Badwater. My old Nikon Coolpix
990, or perhaps just the batteries, was not too happy with the heat though.
Outside temperature approached 45C and even though the air conditioner worked
flawlessly, the sheer radiation of the sun heated everything it touched to
boiling and my camera refused to cooperate as we got down to Badwater.
My wife had hers though so we got out on the salt
to snap a few pictures. The kids forgot their sun-glasses and walking on the
white salt in the intense sunlight just wasn’t possible so they turned back to
the shade of the shelter by the parking. After spending a night and half a day
down in the valley you come to realize that one of hottest places on earth
means the heat is just merciless. No escape anywhere, the sun is more or less
straight up and even at night the temperature is around 40C. And there were
Shoshone Indians living down here before
Drove
back towards Artist’s drive which was closed due to this winters bad flooding,
but got to see the “hourglass rock”
and then took the terrible gravel road down
to Devil’s Golf-course. Halfway down there a photo or film-team were shooting
some scenes, pretty weird to see this well-dressed female model walking like
she was on a cat-walk in her dress. I wonder if she was sweating…
Went
back to Furnace Creek for lunch – and coffee! Ever since we left the house I’ve
been plagued by a lingering headache that had worsened every afternoon. Despite
the diluted kind they served, the caffeine had its effect and I felt good
again. Why do I never learn?
After
meat-loaf and a variety of other treats from the buffet, we decided to take a
drive up to see the ghost-town of Rhyolite. It was
amazing to drive up the deserted, in every meaning of the word, road towards
After
a mile or so on our way to Rhyolite, an old man,
maybe in his 80’s, waved at us from beside a parked car so we stopped and asked
if he was okay. It turned out that he and a lady the same age and a younger
couple had gotten stuck there, maybe from a not too uncommon vapor-lock and had
managed to exhaust the battery. We offered the elderly a ride to get out of the
heat but they preferred to stay with car, so for lack of anything better we
promised to notify the sheriff or the rangers from Beatty which they were
grateful for. As I asked the younger man about the name of the place, I looked
around and before he answered I saw the sign “Hell’s Gate”. So this would be
something like reporting a crime committed by seven little dwarves… We both
laughed and agreed that it was better to be at the gate than past…
So
we took aim at Beatty a little ways past Rhyolite and
got there after about 30 minutes and found the sheriff’s office. I hoped they
would either know the area or have a sense of humor as I walked up to the
window and told them about the people that were stuck at Hell’s Gate. They did
know the area and called the ranger station down in 
As we got up the gravel road we were greeted by a sign telling us to register,
but the little building there was shut with a note about wet paint and an old
man, apparently living with his wife in a trailer behind it, was walking behind
the building. He didn’t make any attempts to socialize, but I approached him
anyway and asked about the strange dam with its huge jets of water shooting in
the air on the other side of the main road. He told me they were evaporating
polluted water from an old gold-mine and I also learned from him that Rhyolite had had 10,000 residents in its glory days at the
turn of the 19’Th century. Sure enough, as we got up there, there was an old
rail-road station that must have been luxurious in its days. No tracks were
left, but an old train-car and a semaphore gave hints of the past.
As
we drove back towards Stovepipe Wells we were relieved to see that the people
at Hell’s Gate had been helped by a ranger. Back at the hotel, we chilled off
in the room with a beer and a whiskey preparing for the nights adventure:
Walking two miles out to the highest sand-dune in the heat.
At
about 7pm we set out with a few liters of water to conquer the desert. The sun
was setting but temperature was still well over 40C. After getting past the
band of nasty spiny weed that grew on the side of the road we took our shoes
off. The day before we learned in an unpleasant way that tens
of thorns easily penetrated the soles of our feet - and our hands when
attempting to remove them. The further out we got, the more sand we had
around us and it truly looked like we were in the middle of
After
a slightly tense walk back to the car, we managed to make it back to the motel
in time before the restaurant closed, but with my companions in varying degree
of exhaustion.
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