Our two day camping permit for Echo Canyon had run out. Where to go next? We thought we’d explore Hole in the Wall road, but the same regulations for camping applied there, just like Echo Canyon we needed a permit. We headed back to Furnace Creek visitor center to find out if there was a permit available. We arrived just after opening and secured the last campsite available for the night. Hole in the Wall it was.
Note: This story is part of the series South to Spring. Click the link or head to our timeline for the other chapters of the trip.
We drove through the Hole in the Wall (a big gap in an otherwise miles long fin of rock blocking the upper valley from the lower) and all the way to the end of the road. There we spent some time hiking the Red Amphitheater. The views were spectacular.
We also found another sign of spring, a hummingbird that stopped long enough for a photo.
We started to make our way back down the road towards camp but we still had time for another side hike to check out the area. Described as “the slit” in the Hiking Death Valley book by Digonnet, you could make this an all day adventure if you navigate around the first set of falls. We just did a quick up and back instead, going to the base of the first falls and enjoying the vistas of the Hole in the Wall from above.
Before we knew it late afternoon was sneaking up on us, so we meandered down the road to our assigned camp for the night. It didn’t offer the great view of the valley like we had from Echo Canyon road, and there was a lot more traffic, but it was still a good spot to spend the night.
The next morning it was back out to the Valley, then south to see Lake Manly. Seeing a lake filling a good portion of Death Valley is a bit surreal. Hurricane Hillary provided most of the water back in August 2023, and from what I understand the lake has been shrinking with evaporation, but may have also been revitalized a bit with the early February atmospheric river that washed out a few roads that the park had just been able to open. All the mud and alkaline water didn’t seem to deter people from heading out from Badwater.
A bit further down the road and away from the crowds we were able to really take it all in. I wonder how much longer the lake will have water in it, and how long it will be dry before the next extreme weather event fills it again?
Being Presidents Day weekend it was time to get off the pavement and out of the Valley for one more night of camping. We needed a backcountry site with no traffic to enjoy our last night in Death Valley. I had asked the park staffer working the desk when we secured our Hole in the Wall camping permit about the current condition of Gold Valley Road. I had noticed on the park’s current condition page that they weren’t advising travel into Gold Valley due to the risk of vehicle rollover because some road sections had been damaged from past storms. The staffer said, “Oh yes, Golden Valley, I think that is one that just got graded.” It was subtle, but I took the hint that since she didn’t know the actual name of the road, she probably was just making up the status, and likely couldn’t point to it on a map. Our options were somewhat limited due to so many other roads being closed, and our planned route of travel, so we decided to give it a try anyway.
As we climbed up out of Greenwater Valley it was apparent that the road wasn’t recently graded (as in, no time in the last decade), but we didn’t expect it to be. As we crested the divide and started to drop down into Gold Valley an off camber downhill pitch with a gully along one side changed our mind and turned around while we still could. There was a great dispersed site at the top of the divide. We spent the afternoon hiking from there. Eventually we ended up circling back to the road below camp and came across one of the recent washouts. It had been crossed as evidenced by the recent tire tracks, but it looked like a bit of an axle breaker to me, so I was happy with our choice to turn around.
The ridge proved to be windy. We didn’t get any rain but a front must have moved through bringing some violent winds. There wasn’t much sleep to be had that night, and we even talked about folding up camp and driving off the ridge, the truck was getting beaten so severely by the wind. By the next morning things had calmed down and we enjoyed a sunny morning watching the sun hit the Panamints before packing it in and continuing our trip south.
Death Valley was a good warm up on our search for spring. Hiking in t-shirts in February, finding some scattered wildflowers blooming, and seeing some spectacular sunsets put us in the right frame of mind, it was just what we were looking for as we traveled South to Spring. We were settling into travel, and I had been looking forward to our next destination ever since we visited last time. We headed south for the Mojave National Preserve.
