CA: Rules for Hiking, Rain in Death Valley, and Dune Walking

Mel’s Diner in Beatty, Nevada, an hour’s drive outside Death Valley National Park, is a cash-only restaurant, and offers a variety of hearty, well-prepared breakfasts; it’s a great place to fuel up for the day before hiking. That’s where the family ate after checking out of their adequate motel the morning before their longish hike that day. 

The drive back to Death Valley was relatively green-not eastern-US-spring-green, but more green than the area would see for a while. Average rainfall in Death Valley is less than two inches per year, with some years seeing zero rain, but not this spring. As they drove, a fine mist gathered on the windshield. The landscape was sprinkled with ragged shrubs, and along the road grew a sparse carpet of tiny plants-all green.  

The first stop of the day was at Zibroski Point, a viewing hill, which offered a grand vista of rolling hills, in soft shades of brown. The wind pushed and pulled at Astrid as she stood looking out at the hills, to the point she sought shelter below the top of the hill. Their next stop was at a trailhead to a trail that would wind, dip and soar within that landscape. 

Astrid’s Rules for Hiking

In the trailhead parking lot, Astrid took some time to prepare for the hike that was before them. She loved nothing better than to immerse herself in the forest by following a trail into a tunnel of trees, and made a point of doing it often. But this was different. There were no trees, only dirt, stones, earth. As she would be hiking for about five miles–planned for with Bjorn’s help–she wanted to make the most of it and that meant getting ready. She had some things to keep in mind. 

1.Be Prepared. Give thought to: where you are hiking, when you will be hiking (what time of day or season), weather predicted during your hike, who you are hiking with, and after considering these things, think about what to bring.

At the very least, bring water–more than you think you need, within reason. The extra weight will help you build strength and will decrease as you drink. Bring a First Aid Kit.

The goal is to not let any personal lack, severe discomfort or need interfere with your hike. Plan so that your physical needs are all anticipated and taken care of, enabling you to move through the landscape, over the trail with full attention on what surrounds you … or doesn’t. 

Thirsty? You got water. Sunny? You have a broad rimmed hat and applied sunblock before you started. Bugs? You have bugspray. Blister? You have mole-skin in your well-stocked, efficiently packed First Aid Kit, and won’t have to suffer a painful hike out. Rain? You got a raincoat (if you care about getting wet, and you might not under certain conditions). 

2. Start Cold. This is a rule Astrid often violated, because she hates to be cold. Being cold was one of the things she feared. It was difficult for her to trust her metabolism, strip off the layers of jackets, put on her pack and walk off into the frigid air. But experience was teaching her, hike by hike. Interrupting a hike a mile or so in to take off her pack, then take off a jacket, or two, then put on her pack again was tedious and disruptive.  

Why start cold, especially when carrying a pack? Everyone knows, but might not think about it when starting a hike. Working, moving human bodies generate heat even in cool or cold environments– a lot of it, especially when moving loads through challenging terrain. A hiker should be just right (depending on temperatures, load carrying, particular metabolisms) if he is a bit cold when starting a hike. 

3. Keep Moving Forward. This rule is subjective. Astrid was a “slow and steady” hiker. On trail, she liked to move at a slow or moderate rate (depending on how long she had been on trail), constantly, never stopping longer than a few minutes every two to three miles if she could help it and never stopping for more than 20 minutes. As opposed to the “sprint and stop” hiker, who moved fast and took a lot of breaks. 

That day the family hiked the Golden Canyon/Gower Gulch Loop Trail. Soon after starting, they dispersed along the trail, Snorri first (of course), Astrid second and Bjorn last, because he was a sprint-and-stop hiker, the “stops” made to take pictures at just the right angle, shutter speed–photograhy-things. But there was another sprint-and-stop type hiking party who Astrid leap-frogged multiple times along the trail, walking past them as they stopped for breaks, then having to move off trail for them to pass, etc, repeat until the end of trail. 

4. Don’t Get Separated. If you have to make a choice of paths, make sure everyone in your hiking group makes the same choice. Snorrie’s hiking style was sprint … and rarely stop. So, he would go on ahead, but with practice and warning he knew that when he came to a fork in the road, he needed to be sure we were going to follow him, that we were going to make the same choice. It’s easy to assume that everyone in your hiking party knows everything you do. Staying within eyesight of one another is another good rule. 

5. Stop to smell the … rocks? Despite Astrid’s love and need of being surrounded by green, the stark, barren landscape through which she moved eventually disclosed its beauty to her. As she struggled through the gravel, up and down hills, she looked around and realized the natural magnificence of the dirt engulfing the trail. The geological pleasantness seeped into her consciousness, along with the rare, light rain, and she loved. She loved the moment, the people she was with, loved the place where she was, loved the dirt, the rocks, the scree and she loved her shoes*. 

*If your shoes hate you (blisters, pinching, pain), or vice versa, and you are in a place where you can’t take them off or get new, it will stick in your memory, tainting your experience, for good or for personal enrichment (see #1). 

6.Passing rules/Snorri’s interpretation. When hiking, and your party encounters another group on a trail too narrow to pass with ease, it is recommended that the party heading down hill step off trail and let the party hiking up the trail pass. “But, what if the people hiking uphill want a break?” Snorri asks, challenging the rule. Which makes sense. In reality, if only a few know the “rule” of passing on hiking trails, hikers will make it up as they go along, and to fit circumstances. So, just be polite.  

7. Do not make Astrid the leader. Through her many frustrating experiences of getting lost, Astrid discovered and came to accept that she had no directional intuition. If left to her own devices (and without navigational devices) to get from Point A to Point B, whether in a car, on foot, or bike, she would get lost at least once … probably five times. But there is hope, she discovered. In the lecture series, Nature Watching: How to Find and Observe Wildlife (Wondrium), the instructor explained that, as with so many skills at which a person may not be naturally adept, with practice, and by keeping a compass and referencing it frequently, she could learn and develop this skill. But it would take effort. 

Minor considerations. When hiking, if you move with your arms down, fingers and hands may swell. If you are wearing rings they may get tight. Consider walking sticks to keep your arms moving and bent to prevent swelling.

***

The best hiking trails are packed dirt or fine, thin stones where a hiker can stroll along with not a care of tripping over rocks, tree roots, weeds or prickles, so that they are free to turn their eyes skyward, or tree-top-ward, to gaze and appreciate their surroundings outside the earth at their feet. But as in life, not all trails are smooth and challenge-free. 

The first part of the loop trail, Gower Gulch Trail, weaved along small gulches and dry stream beds between hills, which had them struggling through deep scree–thick layers of small pebbles that had eroded from the surrounding hills. It was a lot like hiking in sand. But then the trail lead up hill and down, on sturdy smooth compacted dirt where the hikers could move more efficiently. 

As they headed back toward the parking lot, the rain started, light and misty at first, but then surprised them by actually raining to the point where Astrid put on her rain coat. 

After the satisfying Death Valley hike in the rain, the family had some time, so drove the Twenty-Mule Road, a scenic and slightly challenging driving road through and around what used to be a major mining area. 

Stovepipe Campground was like the other campground-a stoney lot, with scraggly trees and signs designating campsites. But there were two restaurants, a gift shop and a camp store there, also. The family ate a late lunch/early dinner at The Toll Road restaurant, where the walls were covered with posters of the movies which were filmed in the valley. These included; Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, a few episodes of The Twilight Zone, and a whole slew of old spaghetti westerns. 

The last stop of the day was at a place Astrid had doubts about. Not because it was a new and challenging thing, but because it was a familiar and challenging thing: sand dunes. Southwest Michigan had some magnificently beautiful dunes, but to walk through, around or up/down them, it took a little more effort and struggling. Walking in sand is walking on an unstable surface, for every step forward, or up, there is a sliding back or down because of the moving sand. You quickly become aware of the great inefficiency of movement. You expend more energy to go less distance. 

But sand dunes are very photogenic. And the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes were no different that evening. Unlike Michigan’s lake-side grass-dotted dunes, these mesquite-pocked dunes were in the middle of a desert, being formed and unformed by strong winds blowing over mountain ridges. Compared to Michigan’s dunes, they were gently undulating, and low, with bare spots of solid ground, but as they were still mounds of sand, they were still challenging to walk through.