My favorite time of day is late afternoon (oh! and maybe early morning when the world is coming alive). Especially when hiking. It is  that time on an all day hike when the hike part of the hike is over, and we are wandering home (or back to camp). Usually in the afternoon shade, the air still warm, and almost always going down hill. In the Sierras, it would often be across a soft meadow, in the desert, it might be down a fan or a ridge. Here it is back to Ubehebe Crater, on the far side from the crowds, with a backdrop that is immense.

As the day was winding down, it was still very windy with rain squalls moving through the hills at the north end of Death Valley wash. Our plan had been to drive back to out previous camp site and camp there another night but, when we got there, it was still pretty windy. Michele led a movement to drive around until we found a dry wash where we could camp out of the wind. The first couple that we investigated were at low points in the road and I was concerned that we  would get too much dust if a car came by.

At one surreal point, we were in a gully when a – seemingly – unending group of Rovers drove by.  Driving even at moderate speed on a dirt road produces alot of dust, and, typically, drivers will spread out so as not to be driving in somebody else’s dust cloud. In this case, three or four Rovers – both Land and Range – would go by , quickly and grouped together driving in a mutual dust cloud with their windows rolled up and, presumably, their air conditioners on – then a space; the dust would settle, and then another group. Thinking of my poor Range Rover all alone in Minden – all alone, cold – it was very strange.

Finally, we found a suitable gully and moved in.

For Easter dinner, we had asparagus  eggs, baby potatoes, and – big surprise – chocolate Easter eggs. Then we lite a campfire and watched and felt the day end.

Part One: Here

Part Two: Here

Part Three: Here 

Part Four: Here

Next: Red Wall Canyon here

Easter Morning, everybody slept in except for JR who was up at 6:00 AM for a couple mile walk before sunrise. The rest of us waited for the sun to warm our bags.

For Easter breakfast – tea outnumbering coffee for the first time I can remember (three to two)  – we had pumpernickel bread, avocado, and chocolate Easter eggs. After some discussion, we decided to drive to Scottie’s Castle for water and then noodle around in the badlands above Ubehebe Crater. Michele and I had gone there on a trip with Laura  Atkins in 2004  and wanted to explore the area a little more.

The whole Death Valley area is dryer this year than I have ever seen it. There are just no flowers, not even going over the high passes. In the valleys  it looks like nothing even woke up. All the way down from Tahoe – until we ran out of light – the Sierras had almost no snow.

In 2004, there was still snow on Tin Mountain at the end of March and the rim of Ubehebe Crater was covered in poppies. It was not considered a particularly wet year.

Ubehebe Crater is at the north end of  the Cottonwood Mountains and sort of separates north Death Valley Wash from Death Valley proper. The crater is about a half a mile across and – depending who you listen to – is 800 to 8,000 old. (For details, go here.)

Ubehebe was both crowded and very windy.

I was promoting getting back in the car and driving to The Racetrack – the Ranger at Scottie’s had assured me that the road had been recently regraded and should be passable in our vehicles – and come back in the afternoon when the wind might have calmed down. Michele opined It is always windy at the crater’s edge. and Courtney said I love the wind, it makes everything feel alive. We decided to wander uphill to some other, smaller, craters and badlands to get away from the crowds and see if we could find an area with a little less wind.

From the edge of one of the small craters, we could see down and across into the badlands and what looked like a route through them and off we went through newly cut  gullies in the badlands.

In, rough hewn land, an excellent book about the geological formation of the Western United States – and a book I highly recommend, it is very, very, readable – Keith Meldahl talks about fossilized rivers in the Sierras. It seems that Nevada was once much higher – like the Tibetan Plateau now – and it was drained by huge Yukon like rivers that cut through the, then, lower Sierras. Nevada sank but the riverbeds, chocked full of rounded debris,  remained. A good example is a roadcut for Interstate 80 – Michele and my favorite roadcut, by the way – near Gold Run. I think that the same thing happened in the badlands we were now exploring. We kept running into old riverbeds full of rounded rocks that were crisscrossing the beds of volcanic ash.

Climbing up the last little pitch to get out of the gully, I slipped, cutting my hand and skinning my knee. A typical minor accident that all of us have probably had as kids and many of us as adults wandering around in the wild. I am still full of high-powered blood thinners because of my Atrial Fibrillation Ablation procedure in January. Consequently, I bleed like a stuck pig.

JR had the First Aid kit and was already at the top, admiring the view, when Michele came over to tell him I had slipped. On the theory that the best thing anybody can do, when somebody is injured, is spread Calm, Michele calmly said something like Steve slipped and cut himself but he is OK. It looks much worse than it is because he is on massive blood thinners. JR walked over and then saw me bleeding. Now he heard, Steve is on massive blood thinners and is going to bleed out. or something close to that.

He went into hyper triage mode, but Michele got him calmed down and JR did a superb job of doctoring my wounds. They didn’t hurt very much and we were soon on our way. Out of the gully, now, and walking along the ridge. The view up into Upper Death Valley Wash was great but, also a little worrying for me. It was raining over the mountains to the north of us and still pretty windy.

The women continued up the ridge to the top of a large hill while JR and I stayed at the midpoint (I suspect JR stayed with me in case I passed out from blood loss or something, but is too much of a gentleman to admit it).

Part One: Here

Part Two: Here

Part Three: Here 

Next: Above Ubehebe 2 here

Gina Matesic, Courtney Gonzales, JR Grubbs, Michele, and I met at Michele’s family cabin late Thursday night so we would be ready to go to death Valley early the next day. The forecast had been for snow showers but Thursday night/Friday morning never got down to freezing and Friday was mostly clear (both the sky and the roads). It was a great weather to start a trip. We got coffee to go in Tahoe City and started around the lake full of big smiles.

Then a funny thing happened; the heater core blew. We had just started out, admiring the color of lake Tahoe when a cloud of steam explode from the heater, fogging the windshield and sending green iridescent coolant running all over the floor. My first reaction was that the trip was off but everybody else’s reaction was How can we work around this problem and get going? 

Courtney – I think – found a nearby garage with an excellent reputation  and we called AAA for a short tow. By the time we got to the garage, we had talked about the problem and I was convinced that the heater core was probably the problem and the easiest, cheapest, fix was to bypass it. (The night before had been about 36°F and I love that the receptionist at the garage told me, Now that it is warm, you really don’t need a heater. I agreed because we were going to the desert but 36°F is heater temperature to me; people in the mountains are tougher, I guess.) As it was almost time for lunch and we followed the mechanic’s recommendation to have a nice lunch at a local Thai diner.

Eurotech – the garage (at 848 Tanager St, Incline Village) – thought they could have us back on the road by 2:00 PM. Before we even got back from lunch, we saw them test driving the repaired car. They even replaced a burned out tail-lamp that I had mentioned. From the disaster of a failed trip to back on the road in less than three hours with a cost about $125.00 was an amazing turn around. I highly recommend Eurotech.

We were on our way, late, but not terminally late and anxious to get to the desert. Tahoe still looked magnificent – with a thin line of fog giving it mystery as we drove down the east side, and over Spooner Summit into Nevada and the Carson Valley.

Then disaster! The radiator intake line blew, sending coolant all over the engine and clouds of steam out from under the hood. We were again stranded, this time in Nevada at Bodine’s Casino. Sitting in Bodine’s parking lot with steam coming out from under the hood, we found out that our biggest water container was leaking, lots of stuff was damp, and we would need to stop at some time and get some more water.

Two connected problems are often a sign that something more basic is wrong and my interpretation was that the hoses were old and failing at about the same time. Those of you who know cars, might be thinking of something more serious but I was still in denial. I had just spent almost $1,000 having Sunset Garage check out the Rover for the trip because I was worried about the belts and hoses being old and brittle and they assured me that they had checked everything and the truck was good to go.

But, what the hell, an upper radiator hose is probably the easiest thing to fix under the hood and JR and Courtney drove a couple of miles to the nearest car parts store and got a flexible hose. We were back on our way in less than two hours and less than twenty bucks. We must have driven atleast five miles before another hose broke. Shit! Unbelievable!

I was ready to throw in the towel at this point but JR lead a revolt to solve the problem once and for all by renting another SUV and having my poor truck towed back to Euroteck. These guys really wanted to get to the desert and were willing to move heaven and earth to make it happen. They went back into Carson City to Hertz to get another SUV while Gina, Michele, and I waited for AAA.

While we were waiting, Galen – a perfect stranger in the best way – drove up in his semi-tricked out Land Rover and told us about a mechanic who specialized in 4×4 vehicles used off road, named Hollars Automotive And 4 Wheel Drive, that was only ten miles down the road in an old gas station. By this time, AAA was starting to say that they could not get a truck there to tow us back to Euroteck until the next day and would I please wait by the side of the road – or come back tomorrow – until they got there.

It seemed a no-brainer, we had the Range Rover towed to Hollars, climbed into the two SUV’s – using the term very loosely, on one of them – and started driving, in the dark now, south.¹  When we got to Bishop, everything but a Pizza Parlor was closed – and their pizza oven was shut down – so we ate pasta there and drove on to the Eureka Valley to find a place to camp. We woke up the next morning in a different world. In my case, in a different world with a deflated airmattress.

1. This makes it sound much easier than it was, not easier really – because it was easy – but less stress free than it really was. I was going into shock, my faithful truck was self  destructing, money was being spent that I hadn’t counted on spending and didn’t want to spend, and it was getting later and later.

Next: Eureka valley here