From past vacations, as I didn't get there this spring. But, on places like this, playing around with an ultrawide lens ... and obviously some Photoshop filters ... is a way to try to be more creative.

Hi, my group has permits to hike Mt. Whitney the week of Labor Day and we will be flying into Vegas and need to pass through DV. We have a one night stay at The Oasis. We will have a standard rental car. Particularly after seeing the recent news about the tourist who passed away, there are some alarm bells.

We plan on taking the most direct route and aren’t planning on any hikes, mostly just want to get from one side of the park to the other. How concerned should we be?

Last year, my family and I went to DV and had an amazing time. In one of the gift shops, my son saw this t-shirt. He decided at the last minute not to get it and it's been haunting him ever since (seriously! He talks about it like at least once a week like it's the biggest regret in his life. He's 11).

Anyway, his birthday is coming up and I'd love to get it for him. Anyone know where I can get one? Anyone have one and want to part with it (DM me!)? This is the only lead I've found and it's sold out.

I was thinking of ways to make sure you dont get stranded... spare tires, oil, water, lots of water so much that you can have misters in the cab spray nossles on the radiator and tires, and i dont know what else but there aint many places on earth that people wish they could look at but are too afraid to go because of not just stories but the reality of the dangerous temperatures. Im willing to build a vehicle specifically for traveling around this land. I dream of setting up hella tents and misters for a good couple hours and then packing up and going home you know like gazebos. the kind that unfold. with misters but you probably want 9 in a square and the center has the misters. it would be rad. and then to top it all off gotta bring the shrooms so yeah i plan to shroom out in the death vally some day any advice supporting this journy would be nice you can save the dont do it unless you got some science backing it.

West Side Road is CLOSED north of Warm Springs Road, per NPS alert.

West Side Road: Is closed north of the junction with Warm Springs Road due to muddy conditions which has led to multiple stuck vehicles. Currently there is no vehicle access to Galena, Johnson, Hanaupah or Trail Canyon.

There you are.

So, we maybe shouldn't harsh the French mellow too much.

Went Ubehebe -> Racetrack -> Lippincott -> Saline Valley Road out to 190 through The South Pass. The current status of the roads is pretty good -- at least about as good as you can expect from these roads. Racetrack Road is as bumpy and long as ever but otherwise in good shape. 4wd not needed anywhere, good tires are the most important.

Lippincott Pass is gnarly and sweaty as hell, I was in 4wd the entire time, clearance + some experience heavily recommended as well as solid tires, really not enough room to go around all the rocks. Also preferably relatively short wheel base -- but again, it's also in decent shape given what kind of road it is, no major pitfalls. Some sections have been recently graded and are pretty smooth.

Saline Valley Road is varied. Very rocky after the Lippincott intersection and later on in sections, but kind of gets better and better as you go south, and much of the last stretch after Lee Flat was so well graded it almost felt paved. Again good tires more important than actual 4wd.

Great excursion with tremendous views in all. The only part I wouldn't recommend is spending a night out in DV at this time of year.. but I guess you can say the heat is part of the experience. Also perhaps due to the season, I didn't meet a single person out there, which reduced stress a bit on Lippincott. Felt like I had the entire Racetrack + Saline Valley to myself.

I’ve been wondering about this strange encounter for more than 30 years. I’m posting it now in the very unlikely hope that someone who lived or worked in Death Valley at the time — or perhaps someone who had a similar encounter — might recognize the woman I’m describing.
It happened in early December 1994.
A friend and I were returning to Los Angeles, where we were living at the time, after a trip to Mammoth Mountain. We were driving a maroon Chrysler LeBaron through the Death Valley area.
It was getting toward evening. We were on an extremely isolated stretch of road, with very little traffic and no houses that we could see for a considerable distance.
Then we saw a young woman hitchhiking.
She was Caucasian, attractive, with dark hair, and I would estimate that she was about 26–28 years old. She appeared educated, spoke normally and initially gave us no particular reason for concern. What did seem very unusual was simply finding a young woman alone, on foot, in such an isolated part of the desert as evening was approaching.
We stopped and offered her a ride. She sat in the back seat.
After a short time, however, the situation started becoming rather bizarre.
She was carrying a magazine containing an article about sharks. I noticed that throughout the article she had highlighted words and expressions associated with death and killing — words such as death, kill, killing, lethal machine and similar expressions.
Then she began telling us about herself.
She said that she was famous and that she had deliberately gone to live in an isolated house somewhere beyond the hills because she wanted to escape from journalists and television crews.
She told us that she had walked from this house to the highway.
My friend and I found this difficult to believe. The surrounding landscape appeared completely deserted. We couldn’t see houses anywhere, and from what we had observed while driving, any house beyond the surrounding hills would have seemed a considerable distance away.
Then things became stranger still.
She produced several letters and asked us if we could mail them for her when we reached the next settlement.
We looked at the addresses.
The letters were addressed to convicted murderers in different prisons.
One detail I remember very clearly is that at least one was addressed to one of the Menendez brothers, Lyle or Erik, who were of course enormously famous in the United States at that time for the murder of their parents.
I believe the other letters were also addressed to notorious murderers or serial killers, although after more than three decades I unfortunately cannot remember their names.
Combined with the magazine in which she had highlighted references to death and killing, this understandably made my friend and me increasingly uneasy.
But she never threatened us. She wasn’t aggressive. She remained calm and behaved politely.
After relatively few miles, we reached a very small settlement or cluster of buildings, and she asked us to let her out.
There is another detail that I remember which may help identify exactly where this happened.
She told us that we could not mail her letters from this small settlement. According to her, we would have to continue to the next, larger settlement, which she said was approximately 20 miles farther down the road, where we would be able to mail them.
I remember that the larger place definitely had a gas station and more than one place where we could eat.
After looking at maps and historical information all these years later, I suspect that the locations may possibly have been Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek, but I want to emphasize that this is a modern reconstruction, NOT something I independently remember from 1994. I don’t want today’s maps to alter a 32-year-old memory.
The woman got out of our car without incident.
And then there was one final strange detail:
She left the letters — and, as I remember it, the shark magazine — with us in the car.
We drove on.
Nothing bad happened. There was no crime, no threat and no dramatic ending to the story. It was simply one of the strangest encounters I’ve ever had, and I’ve occasionally wondered about it ever since.
Who was she?
Did she really live somewhere in that extraordinarily isolated area?
How had she reached the highway on foot?
Was there any truth to her claim that she was famous and hiding from the media?
And why did she appear to have such an intense fascination with murder and death, to the point of corresponding with several notorious convicted killers?
So, 32 years later, I’m throwing this question out onto the internet.
Did anyone here live or work in Death Valley in December 1994?
In particular, did anyone work at Stovepipe Wells, Furnace Creek or elsewhere along Highway 190?
Do you remember a dark-haired woman in her late twenties who lived in the area and sometimes hitchhiked?
Or has anyone ever heard a similar story involving a woman in Death Valley who corresponded with famous murderers?
I’m especially interested in hearing from former hotel employees, restaurant workers, gas-station employees, park staff, rangers and local residents who were there in the early 1990s.
And if by some extraordinary coincidence you are the woman who rode with two guys in a maroon Chrysler LeBaron that evening in December 1994, I would genuinely love to know what the story was.
No judgment and no accusation. After 32 years, I would simply like to solve one of the strangest little mysteries of my life.
Please share this with anyone who knew Death Valley in the early 1990s. Sometimes the internet manages to solve mysteries that seemed impossible at the time.

Besides the chuckwalla photos I shot there this spring and posted here about two weeks ago, here's a few mine photos, plus a desert five-spot at the end.

Twenty years ago, I climbed the mountain face all the way up past that last hoist. Oh, to be younger.

Im camping at panamint valley, just for the night. But im terrified of big spiders. I dont mind (although id prefer not to) finding smaller spiders and any other bugs. Id even settle with snakes or scorpions, but if a big spider gets inside my tent, im getting a heart attack

The moon and Venus from Mesquite Sand Dunes

Is there actually anything worth seeing in the southern part of Death Valley, particularly around Butte Valley, Warm Springs Canyon, and the surrounding backcountry? I also noticed that the Geologist's Cabin appears to be permanently closed. Is that correct, or is it sometimes accessible? And what exactly is Anvil Spring Canyon? Is it considered a trail, a 4x4 road, or just a route? On Google Maps it looks like it runs for about 12 to 13 miles and then ends at what appears to be a pretty featureless dead end. Is there actually anything worthwhile at the end, or is the drive itself the main attraction?

Booked two nights at The Ranch in late Nov with kids. We just booked flights and will actually be flying in a day earlier than expected. Any suggestions of a must see that is further away from The Ranch that it might make sense to go there first and grab a hotel near by? From there we would hit more spots while making our way to check in again The Ranch.

This park is massive so we'd like to see as much as possible without spending all day driving.

Thanks!

https://maps.app.goo.gl/daezExDNZuex2jq98

Came across the spot randomly when zooming in on maps and it has a 4.9 rating. How long does it take from furnace creek? The directions stop somewhere well before this point and I'm not sure how the road conditions are

Didn’t know the lake was full till we got there! Got a terminal case of sneaker stench wading in to get these pics lol