This was our last day in the park with only two planned stops; a hike at Golden Canyon to Red Cathedral and stop and pictures from Father Crowley’s overlook. Another sunny Chamber of Commerce Day. Made a couple of short stops driving into the park since lighting on the Furnace Mountains was highlighting the geologic bedding.
Next stop was unplanned as Wylie E. Coyote was strolling on the highway just east of the Inn at Death Valley. Since asking for an autograph seemed a little forward, we just called him over to the window and took his picture. Yellowstone has bears, elk and such. Death Valley has coyotes and birds.
The Golden Canyon hike was very nice … until the very end. Another case of vertical exposure; but only 150 feet or so. My thinking was “same damage in 150 feet as almost 6000 feet from Dante’s View”. There was in the old days, a paved road that went part way up the canyon. You can see remnants of that in some of the pictures below. Golden Canyon is on the east side of the Badwater Basin in the Furnace Creek Formation. The trail turns a bit northward and if you take it past the Red Cathedral goes to at Zabriskie Point and comes back down Gower Gulch back to the basin. Besides the bedding and tortured rocks visible in the canyon, there is a prominent reddish cliff near the Zabriskie Point stop on the trail that was visible in the Day 1 photos on the north side of Zabriskie Point. A great 2.9 mile out and back trail and great hike.
We stopped at the Furnace Creek picnic area for lunch – another very large mixed salad and then proceeded west on Highway 190 to begin our trek back to Cathedral City. It is a long way from Furnace Creek to Highway 395 south. We went around the Panamint Mountains, into Panamint Valley and up onto the Darwin Plateau. During this part of the trip, we crossed 300-million-year-old limestones and siltstones, 200-million-year-old granodiorites and 40-million year-old and younger basalt flows. Lots of tortured rock, great visible faulting and colorful bedding. This took us to the head of Rainbow Canyon and Father Crowley’s outlook with more pictures below. From there the trip continued westward to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and highway 395. We had hoped to see Mt. Whitney, but there were clouds. From there, a relatively fast trip south, dinner at Red Lobster and home in-bed by 9:00 PM.
Great trip!!
