During the summer months at Death Valley, birds sometimes drop out of the sky, killed by the extreme heat. Would our car die as well? As the car slid down Highway 190 into Death Valley, the temperature indicator continued to climb: 105, 110, 112, 115, eventually topping out at 123 degrees F. Would the tires hold up? Can cars even drive in such heat?
We’d hardly seen another vehicle on this road on this hot August afternoon. But when we pulled into the parking lot at Father Crowley Vista Point, we felt better, as plenty of other visitors joined us there for views of Rainbow Canyon.
Visiting Death Valley at the peak of summer is a unique experience. It’s probably not for everyone, but I went there in August, 2018, and had a lovely time exploring the park, the largest outside of Alaska.
Although we had a car full of camping gear, camping was not an option. As we drove by, one lonely tent sat in the campground at Emigrant, and not a single tree. The temperature here was about 119 degrees, and probably 15 or 20 degrees higher in the heat-absorbing tent. But summer is “low season” at Death Valley, and we scored a last-minute air-conditioned room at the Furnace Creek Ranch, motel-style accommodations with a mediocre family-style restaurant and a fantastic pool. Across the road, the fancy Furnace Creek Inn beckoned with all of its 1920s glamour and low summer rates, but alas, the inn was full.
In the winter, I could spend a lot of time exploring the nooks and crannies of Death Valley, which features mountains and canyons galore, as well as the lowest point in the United States, Badwater Basin. There is also the weird Scotty’s Castle, one-time vacation home to Chicago businessman Albert Johnson and his wife Bessie, along with their sidekick, the con artist/cowboy Walter Scott. Unfortunately, the Castle is closed until 2020, as it sustained severe damage in a 2015 flash flood.
In the summer, signs posted everywhere remind visitors that hiking after 10 a.m. is dangerous and not recommended. Thus, we set our alarms for 4:45 a.m., intent on greeting the day at Badwater Basin. By dawn, the temperature had cooled to a reasonable 100 degrees or so — a dry heat. By 5:30 a.m., we were wandering around the Basin in blissful solitude.
After the sunrise, when the temperature had climbed to a reasonable 105 or so, we headed up a nearby gravel road to the trailhead for the short hike into Natural Bridge Canyon.
The hike — about one-mile round trip, depending on how far you hike in — offers some fun rock scrambles and interesting geological features.
Then, after a drive along Artist’s Palette loop road, (which shows off its best colors closer to sunrise or sunset) we returned to the air-conditioned visitor’s center to check out the exhibits, and then to our room at the Ranch for siesta.
That evening, after a visit to the glamorous Furnace Creek Inn for a late afternoon snack, we headed to Zabriskie Point to catch the sunrise and watch the colors of the sunrise play out across the folds of the Death Valley.
Death Valley attracts many European visitors in August, and we found ourselves surrounded by a mix of French, German, Italian, Spanish and other voices.
Evidence suggests that like many places on earth, Death Valley is heating up even further. Summers have always been hot at Death Valley. But in 2018, Death Valley had it warmest ever July, breaking the record set during 2017, with an average daily temperature of 108.2, six degrees higher than usual. At the Furnace Creek weather station, the high temperature hit at least 120 degrees on 21 days. On four days, the temperature soared to 127 degrees. (The highest temperature ever of 131 degrees Farenheit was “reliably recorded” at Furnace Creek on June 30, 2013).
A “wet bulb” temperature of 100 degrees F (35 Celsius) and 85% humidity that equals 167 degrees is the maximum heat limit for human survivability, because the body’s cooling system can’t keep pace with the heat (see Leahy source, below). The NOAA National Weather Service Heat Index shows the combinations of heat and humidity that produce specific “wet bulb” temperatures.
But wet bulb temperatures below 167 degrees also kill people. In 2015, a heat wave that generated wet-bulb temperatures of 122 degree F killed over 3,500 people in India and Pakistan. Chicago experienced a similar heat wave in 1995, and hundreds of people died. Thanks to climate change, we can expect more Death Valley-like days everywhere in years to come.
The Timbisha Shoshone people, who still call Death Valley home, knew how to survive in this harsh environment. But Death Valley earned its name for a reason. At Furnace Creek, the spring-fed pools and air-conditioned rooms changed our experience of the heat from a threat to a novelty that we could experience, and then retreat from to a cooler environment. But around the world, millions of people in hot zones — along with plants and wildlife — have no access to a cooler artificial environment. I wonder how we will adapt as major cities around the world routinely experience stretches of Death Valley days.
Being an optimist, or perhaps willfully blind, I’ll end by saying that I look forward to returning to Death Valley, but probably in another season, when birds don’t drop from the sky, and I can spend the entire day outdoors exploring this amazing national resource.
Sources and resources
This cool map of Death Valley, from the National Park Service, displays in a couple of different ways.
“Death Valley posts hottest month ever recorded on Earth, for the second July in a row,” by Ian Livingston and Jason Samenow. The Washington Post, August 1, 2018.
“Parts of Asia May Be Too Hot for People by 2100,” by Stephen Leahy. National Geographic News, August 2, 2017.
We took our young family to DV in April of 2000. The hot winds and stunning landscape are imprinted on all of us. I worry about our planet and the changes to come. We live in a big beautiful world, Dianne. Thanks for sharing some of it with us. SLW
You should compare Death Valley in August with Mt. Washington in December/January. It might make an interesting comparison!