Backpacking the valley of the shadow of death

Acting on a little research and a tip from a friend, we decided to put together a two night backpacking trip through Cottonwood and Marble Canyons in Death Valley.  The geology and plants kept us entertained until we reached the first of multiple springs in this area.  The valley was filled with beautiful green cottonwood trees which was a great contrast to the brown desert.  It also meant that we didn't have to carry much water which was really nice.  Marble Canyon had some great narrows to explore and more petroglyphs to add to our collection.  





Once we completed our trip, we headed to Stovepipe to call a couple friends who said that they might want to meet up with us.  Something about Death Valley really makes you want to eat ice cream, even when it is only 90 degrees.  We enjoyed some refreshing treats and beverages and found that our friends Erin and Beth would meet up with us the following day.  In the meantime we did a tour of the underground of Scotty's Castle which is literally a castle that was built in the 1930's by an engineer.  Amazingly enough, the park still uses 80 percent of the original infrastructure.  We also did a quick tour of a ghost town where we saw the standard decomposing buildings, a 40 foot tall statue of a miner and a penguin, a Lego lady, and a real man with a silver box on his head taking a picture of a car.  Awesome.



Erin and Beth met up with us and all of us being geologists, we decided to head for the racetrack to analyze some theories regarding rocks (some up to 400 pounds) moving across the playa.  The rocks are at the south end of the almost 2 mile long playa but we decided to park at the north end and walk the whole playa.  All of us were a bit giddy about what we would find (maybe this is a testament to just how dorky geologists really are) and we ended up spending four hours out there.  The only reason it was cut to four hours was due to lack of food and water.  Satisfied with our geology tour we headed to Teakettle Junction for some camping and to get close to our mine tour the following day.  The mine turned out to be pretty extensive with some really deep vertical shafts that could only be described by us as "deathy".  We hiked up to the top of a hill for a great vista of the racetrack playa with the Mt Whitney in the background.  Erin and Beth decided to tour the remainder of Death Valley since Erin had never been here before and Ron and I decided to take the road less traveled out of the park which consisted of a dirt road over a mountain pass.  In one place it was one lane, going up at a rather steep angle, and a thousand foot drop on one side (mom - I'm sorry if you're reading about this).  After a week of Death Valley we decided to venture into the rest of California...