Is There a Deserted Corner of Death Valley? Ubehebe Country

Is there an empty quarter of Death Valley National Park? An area so isolated that tourists are almost never found there? The short answer is: of course. Much of the park is near-primeval wilderness, roadless and untrammeled, and largely devoid of humans. That's as it should be. We need to have these kinds of places, a reminder of the natural world where humans haven't mucked everything up, places that have value measured in something other than dollars. 

Places like Badwater, Furnace Creek, and Dante's View are popular tourist destinations, and are certainly wonderful places to visit. But in my travels I like the places that feel like the end of the road, the entrance portal into a wild and even dangerous world. One of those kinds of places is Ubehebe Crater at the end of the paved road in northern Death Valley. 

Ubehebe Crater is part of a volcanic field that includes a number of basaltic cinder cones, and seven or so phreatic (groundwater) explosion pits called maars. The volcanoes are quite young, with some that erupted as recently as 800 or so years ago (though the dates are still being debated).  The biggest crater is 750 feet deep and half a mile across. The groundwater explosions were caused when magma approached the surface, heating the water and causing it to flash to steam. Dozens of explosions would have accompanied the formation of each crater.

The craters are a fascinating destination for Death Valley travelers, although few make the effort unless they are also going to Scotty's Castle. Walking to the bottom of the crater is one way to gain an appreciation for the power of exploding magma. So is a walk around the biggest crater. In the picture above, the cars in the parking lot on the opposite rim are barely visible.

But the reason I love stopping in at Ubehebe is the sense at being at the edge of the wilderness. The pavement ends, and only gravel roads continue, towards Racetrack Playa in one direction, and the distant town of Big Pine in the other. The lands seen from the edge of the crater rim feel like terra incognita. It's wild, lonely country.

The fourth day of our recent journey to Death Valley was devoted to an exploration of the north end of Death Valley, with stops at Bonnie Claire Playa and Ubehebe. The day was ending as we drove back down the valley towards Stovepipe Wells, but the sky was gorgeous.

A Sere and Barren Place. And the Biggest National Park in America's Lower Forty-Eight.

People don't feel isolation very often. Well, plenty of us do feel isolated, but it tends to be an isolation in which we are surrounded by people and the trappings of civilization, but are separated by our life situations, our depression, and our dependence on technology instead of our social skills. But how often are we completely cut off from civilization? I imagine it's somewhat rare these days.

In many parts of the country it is just plain impossible. Humans have made their mark on the land, paving it over, building cities, plowing farms. If the land is useful to humans in any way, it gets used up, and then some. And barren lands make many people uncomfortable to say the least. We seek the cities and towns for the most part.

It's a learning experience to see, and feel, the wild places. The Earth is the source of our water, our food, our material resources, and sometimes our inspiration. It's easy to take it for granted if we don't understand how it works. Which, in a nutshell, is why I teach, and why I take people to the wild places. And there are few places as wild and isolated as Death Valley National Park, the largest national park outside of Alaska.

It's true that about a million people visit the park every year, but they spend almost all their time at three places: Furnace Creek, Stovepipe Wells, and Scotty's Castle. They venture forth to Dante's View and Badwater, but invariably head back to the small outposts of civilization where they sleep in hotel rooms, RVs, or tents, and eat in the few restaurants. But there are those moments that people do experience a sense of the wild.

Badwater is one of those places where it is at least momentarily possible. People go there in droves because it is the lowest point in the western hemisphere (-280 feet; 86 meters), but they often step away from the parking lot and the interpretive signs and start walking onto the Death Valley salt pan, 110 square miles of barren salt and clay. It doesn't take but a few moments before the cars shrink to insignificance, and there is only the silence, or maybe just a bit of wind. Nothing lives there. One is standing in the bottom of a valley more than one hundred miles long with only a thin artery of pavement, and two little outposts of civilization thirty miles apart. It's about as close to the primeval Earth as one can be.

You are standing in one of the world's greatest geologic landscapes. The mountains to the east contain metamorphic rocks 1.7 billion years old, recording in their convoluted folds the collision of huge landmasses and growth of a gigantic mountain range that has since eroded away. The mountains to the west contain sedimentary rocks tens of thousands of feet thick. They record the deposition of limestone, shale, and sandstone along a continental margin that faced a brand new Pacific Ocean 600 million years ago. The fault scarps on the alluvial fan to the south record ancient earthquakes that over a few million years have produced some of the steepest and highest mountain ranges in the American west. More than 11,000 feet separates the summit of Telescope Peak from the valley floor.
The salt and clay of the valley floor record two million years of climate change. Dry warm periods alternated with colder glacial ages that sent meltwater coursing down the Owens Valley, through China Lake, Searles Lake, Panamint Lake and finally into Lake Manly, the freshwater lake that once filled Death Valley to a depth of 500 or 600 feet. Mineralized lake deposits cling to the cliffs above Badwater.

Standing for a brief moment in the middle of nothingness can bring the incredible history of the Earth into sharp focus. But it's not long before our schedule tears us away from the solitude of the moment and we climb into the vehicles and move on towards the comfort of camp, and bathrooms, and dinner. In 1849, a band of travelers had a completely different experience. They were stranded in the valley for several months, having traveled an untested route to California's gold fields. Although only one of their party succumbed during the ordeal, the reputation of Death Valley as a dangerous place was set in stone. The dangers can be real.

In a picture, or in a vehicle, the road looms large. It fills our field of vision, giving us the illusion that humans have somehow conquered this landscape. But it is an illusion. We are not in charge, and all it takes to find this out is the smallest of problems. An overheated radiator. An oil leak. A miscalculation of the mileage in a rental car that is now out of gas. There's no phone service. Even the GPS is sometimes a problem out there. People have been stranded on old mining roads that aren't patrolled regularly. Death Valley didn't necessarily deserve the name it was given in the beginning, but death is no stranger to this place.

It is the hottest and driest place on the continent. It is indeed the hottest place in the world. But in the right season, Death Valley is a delightful place to visit. And it is one of the best places in the world to learn geology in the most dramatic way possible. And  a place where one can learn the value of solitude, for a little while at least.

What Defines a Wilderness? Is it the Barrenness or the Richness? The Joe Domecq Wilderness Area and Gold Dredging

A wilderness surprise: Joe Domecq Wilderness Park

Wilderness [wil′dər nis]:
1. A neglected or abandoned area of a garden or town.
2. An area essentially undisturbed by human activity together with its naturally developed life community.

Can these two meanings be reconciled? I'm used to the definition of wilderness as it was written into the 1964 Wilderness Act: a contiguous area of at least 5,000 acres (7.8 square miles) that is as close to a primeval natural state as is possible. The landscape where I live has precious little remaining wilderness: the Great Valley has less than 5% of its original ecosystem. The Sierra Nevada has more open space and wilderness, but mostly in the high country. The deep forests of the middle elevations have been extensively logged, while the foothills were upended in the search for gold. The rivers have been mostly dammed.

Gold dredge deposits near Merced Falls

The dredging of Sierra Nevada/Great Valley rivers for gold was a particularly destructive form of mining. Put into practice long after the famous Gold Rush of 1848-53, dredging was an example of business getting serious about their "business". A great deal of fine-grained gold was not being captured by the usual mining methods and was lost downstream. Around 1898 the first successful dredge was placed in operation. It was a floating factory with large shovels on one side and a conveyer belt on the other. The shovels dug up one end of the pond, processed the sediments through sieves and mercury-coated copper plates, and then dumped them out the other end. In this way, the dredge sailed across the landscape, "dragging" its pond along. It was horribly efficient, as the miners could profit when there was only 18 to 20 cents of worth of gold in a cubic yard of gravel.

Dredged floodplain on the Merced River near Snelling, CA. Courtesy of GoogleEarth

How was this destructive? The mining process destroyed the natural soil of the river floodplains and replaced it with barren piles of boulders and cobbles that were no longer useful for pretty much any other purpose. Especially the growing of crops. Many tens of thousands of acres of valley floor were permanently altered. A dredge field on the Merced River in my area is nine miles long and half a mile wide. Similar amounts of land were dredged on the Tuolumne River that flows by my home town.

So here is the source of my opening question. After fifty or sixty years of abandonment, the dredge fields are returning to nature, after a fashion. Cottonwood trees have taken root here and there, and the old dredge ponds have formed tule thickets and swamps. The other day we were visiting Turlock Lake State Recreational Area (the lake stores water for irrigation). We continued up the road and more or less by accident discovered that we had a "wilderness" area right in our own backyard: it's called the Joe Domecq Wilderness Area, and is part of the larger La Grange Regional Park administered by Stanislaus County. We were intrigued and walked in.

The wilderness preserves about 270 acres of dredged lands and includes a pond, swamps, cottonwood and eucalyptus woodlands, and grassy meadows. Despite the horrific damage done to the original landscape, the environment has now recovered enough to provide a rich habitat for birds and other creatures. The preserve is minimally developed (rough trails, two picnic tables, no bathrooms), but there is plenty of land to wander about, especially if one is interested in birds.

As we explored, the woods were alive with bird songs. We meant to have a brief look, and stayed for two hours. I got a number of bird pictures, including one or two that I haven't seen before.

Before returning home, I walked out onto Old Basso Bridge, the old Highway 132 crossing of the Tuolumne River. It's across the street from the wilderness area. It's been replaced by a modern bridge and is reserved for pedestrians now. This area around the riverbank provides one more piece of habitat for the local animal life, including salmon during the right season.

It was a pleasant discovery, and nice to find that the abandoned barren lands can be rejuvenated. If you would like to see some of the birds we saw, make the jump below for some pictures.