Training Log Archive: TomN

I solo-hiked up Fall Canyon this morning. The weather was just great, partly cloudy and fairly cool, particularly higher up. It rained a little yesterday afternoon and evening, part of an ongoing weather pattern, and the desert plants were all in bloom.

There's a pretty well-worn path up to the mouth of the canyon, and then it's just hiking on the canyon floor for about 3 miles until you come to a dry waterfall, smoothed and carved, which blocks further passage. But it was not too hard to find the way around it, which involves backtracking a ways and making a couple of easy climbing moves up a little weakness in the rock. I took some pains to remember what it looked like from above, so I could find it on the way back.

Above the fall was really nice. The canyon narrows down to a slot, making a sinuous way between smooth vertical walls for a couple hundred feet.

I went another couple of miles before turning around. Supposedly the way is blocked again after about 3 miles, and I must have been close, but at that point the canyon was wide and rubbly, and not too interesting.

By the afternoon it was full sun and getting hot, and I must have passed 40 people who had decided it would be a great time to start hiking up. Hope they brought water.

Death Valley is so huge, everything takes anywhere from a half-hour to 2 hours to drive to. But the area around Stovepipe Wells has a bunch of stuff to see. In the afternoon we went to Salt Creek (40 minute drive), where there's a boardwalk over a salt marsh. The creek was flowing, and it was full of pupfish. This tiny area is the only place in the world where they live, gradually confined to a smaller and smaller habitat as the valley has dried up over the past 10,000 years.

Then a late-afternoon hike up Mosaic Canyon, about a mile up, then back again. Amazing rock formations. The name refers to the rock fragments embedded in a concrete-like matrix and smoothed off like a polished wall.

High up in Fall Canyon I saw a number of butterflies of a single species, which I guessed was a checkerspot of some kind, and it turns out I guessed right.

It's a Sagebrush Checkerspot, native to the desert areas in the far west, and shows up in Death Valley from time to time.

I give up, even after I've shared a photo on Google Photos, I can't include an image inline.