deathvalleypilgrimagep5

Death Valley pilgrimage

After another great night in the Springs we decided to spend the day and night in the Death Valley itself, mostly to see Titus Canyon - a first for both Dirk and Eduardo.

But first, a stop to the lake along Saline Valley road. Can you guess why it's called "Saline"?

It's a spectacular place

There were several of those "poles" aligned from the lake to the road. Not sure what they were for...

Other wood structures are now lying on the ground

Salt can dissolve almost anything

But also create beautiful "flowers"

Other interesting figures created by the salt

One last pic of the team before to leave Saline Valley

Following a tip that another rider gave us at the Springs we stopped by the Aguereberry point out of Panamint Valley. The Basque gold miner Pete Aguereberry built the 6.5 miles access road to it just so he could show his friends the spectacular view

. From the top at 6500 ft, you can see Badwater 300 ft below see level! Too bad the weather was very cloudy that day...

The 2 compadres

We entered Death Valley through the beautiful Emigrant Canyon road, stopped again at Stove Pipes for gas and then head to Nevada to catch the road to Titus Canyon.

That road offers great scenery, almost as great at the Canyon itself.

Titus Canyon is so famous that Dirk worried about too much traffic/people

. Besides the short portion of the road that brings to the east entrance the rest is one way only (from the West) which creates quite a long detour and so reduces dramatically the number of visitors. The signs also recommend a 4x4 with high clearance because at times, with floods, the gravel can be pretty deep in the canyon. Anyway there was hardly anyone this late afternoon...

Even in such a grey day the colors were beautiful

Can you see the road we took, coming from the top right corner? Awesome feeling of remoteness...

After the pass, another stunning view and road (mandatory motorcycle on the left

).

Eduardo seems to like it

The road to go to the canyon was so beautiful that Dirk and Eduardo later told me that they thought that was "it", the main attraction. Until we started to enter the canyon itself...

Despite the grey weather the color and the height of the wall is still spectacular!

It's almost impossible to comprehend the telluric forces that have "folded/wrapped" those huge layers of rocks. And what about the strenght of the water that created the canyon later

.

The road was the smoothest it has ever been for me so I guess they had removed the gravel very recently. We had the pleasure of just enjoying the view rather than focusing on our front wheel!

It was getting late and we still had no idea on where we would camp that night... The only things we knew were that we didn't want to stay on a crowded "official" campground and also that it would be a long ride tomorrow to San Francisco so the closer to the way out, the better. Two other things influenced our choice: we wanted to eat in a restaurant and lower elevation would mean warmer night

. That's why we decided to find something close to Stove Pipes and were looking for any promising trail out of the road. The rule in DV is to stay out at least 2 miles off a paved road to camp.

However, the only trail we found was in really bad shape and the light was declining quickly so we stopped about 1/2 mile from the road.

In such an accidented terrain, the only "flat" spots we could find were in a washout gravel bed. We knew it might be bad in case of rain but showers were not expected before the next day so we took the risk. It's a desert after all

.

We went for a so-so meal at Stove Pipes, finished our Scotch back at camp under the stars and went to bed for a good night. Or so we thought

.

At 3-4 AM rain started to pour. Really hard. I always find it kind of comforting to rest in a tent, warm and comfy, listening to the rain... This time was a different story!

It continued to rain like crazy for hours! Suddenly the tent was not comfy anymore: droplets were wetting my face. Looks like I messed up when I washed my rain fly last time. Anyway, nothing that a waterproof motorcycle jacket over your face cannot solve.

We started to hear some strange sounds in the dark. First, 3 OHV passed on the trail close by, going back to the 190. What were they doing there at 4 AM? Later on, we heard some far away sounds of several cars and even a thumper at once that seem to be stuck in mud or something. Where were they? Why so many people off-road in the middle of the night?

The situation was getting worse in my tent: a puddle was forming in one of the corners:

Not sure if it came from the droplets from the top (trapped by the waterproof bottom of the tent) or if it was coming from the bottom (not that waterproof in that case). The reason why I was also worried about the bottom is that I could feel water underneath. Actually I could even feel a flow

.

Everything inside the tent started to get wet, including parts of my down sleeping bag that doesn't like at all to be wet

. The Thermarest really felt like and island, there only thing remotely dry.

Some pressing need forced me outside of my tent and here is what I've discovered:

A real stream of water was running through the camp

! No wonder everything was soaked. I went to check the bikes but luckily they were still standing up.

None of us slept well that night but Eduardo was still smiling

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