Desert Storms and Superblooms: Death Valley With Steve Hall

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | Email | TuneIn | RSS

What are the fascinating — and also dangerous — aspects of Death Valley National Park? How does visiting a stark desert landscape give us perspective about our place in the world?

Steve Hall is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park.

• What’s special about Death Valley National Park?
• What are some of the iconic places to visit?
• The dangers of Death Valley
• Solo adventures and challenges
• Dark skies and star gazing
• Legends and history
• Conservation and visitor etiquette

You can find Steve’s hiking videos of Death Valley and other places at YouTube.com/stevehallDV. The Death Valley National Park website has lots more info.

You can find pictures and notes, as well as book recommendations on Death Valley here.

You can find Death Valley, A Thriller, by J.F. Penn, here.

Transcript of the interview

Jo: Hello travelers. I’m thriller author, J.F. Penn, and today I’m here with Steve Hall. Hi Steve.

Steve: Hi Jo. It’s great to be talking to you today.

Jo: Yes, just a little introduction. Steve is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park, which we’re talking about today. Let’s start with the basics.

Where is Death Valley in the world and what drew you to it initially?

Steve: Great questions. You know, it’s great to be talking with you about Death Valley National Park—of course, my favorite national park to visit. Death Valley is part of the Northern Mojave Desert, and it’s located right along the California–Nevada border.

It’s kind of situated in between Las Vegas to the east and the Sierra Nevada mountains off to the west. It is the largest national park in the lower 48 states. It actually has the great size of 3.4 million million acres, and it’s 140 miles in length, going from the bottom of the park all the way up to the top in the north. So it’s quite expansive.

Well, it kind of started for me back in 1997 when I was with a group of friends on the way to the Grand Canyon. As we finished up our trip there, we had a couple of extra days on our way home. So I noticed on a map all these kind of scary-sounding names within Death Valley—locations such as the Devil’s Golf Course, the Devil’s Cornfield, the Funeral Mountains, Badwater—kind of all scary, foreboding-sounding places. I told my friends, “Why don’t we stop there? We have a little extra time and see what Death Valley is all about.” And that’s what we did.

We drove through the park and actually had a kind of scary experience right when we first crossed the park boundaries. My very first memory of crossing into the park was seeing an injured motorcyclist on the dirt just off the road. I guess he had taken a turn too fast or something, but he flew off his bike and was injured, and paramedics were attending to him. So that was my introduction to the park—seeing somebody badly injured.

But on that first trip, I visited some of the famous tourist destinations such as Badwater, Artist Palette, Zabriskie Point, and Devil’s Golf Course. So that kind of gave me a little taster or teaser of the park. Those are the same kinds of destinations that first-time park visitors are sent to.

Let’s just get a bit into what it looks like because you mentioned a few things there, like the Devil’s Golf Course. I went to Badwater. I went to the Artist Palette in my day trip when I visited. You also mentioned the Grand Canyon. So I feel like even Americans or anyone in the world who knows a little bit about America has heard of the Grand Canyon, has seen pictures of the Grand Canyon. In their minds, when they say “National Park in America,” that’s kind of what people have in their mind, I think, because that’s the most famous one.

What is different about Death Valley and those places that we mentioned? Why are they so evocative?

Steve: Well, anytime somebody thinks about American national parks—like what you mentioned—they might think about the big famous ones such as Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone. Those have sights that are just so famous.

When you walk out to the Grand Canyon for the first time and look at that sweeping vista, it’s so overwhelming and it’s captured well in photographs. The same thing with Yosemite, with the majestic waterfalls and Half Dome. When it comes to Death Valley, people might think of a bleak, lifeless desert, so it might not be the first destination that comes to their mind when they’re thinking about visiting a US national park.

Well, tell us what it looks like. Like the Artist’s Palette, for example. Why is it called the Artist’s Palette, and what makes it special?

Steve: Well, that is a very interesting and neat place to check out and explore.

It’s along a place that’s known as Artist Drive, which is a one-way loop road that comes off of Badwater Road. Artist Palette itself has some very colorful hills. It is basically what the name implies. You drive up to it, you get out and take a look, and you’re surrounded by these colorful badlands. Some of the minerals and different forces have created a variety of colors on display. It really does have just about every color you can imagine.

You look out and there are all these little canyons going in different directions, and there are hills that you can scramble up. Of course, it’s a photographer’s dream. Artist Palette has been featured in, for instance, a music video by the group Oasis—their video “Who Feels Love?” was filmed partly in Death Valley, and Artist Palette was one of the locations that they chose. It’s a very famous spot.

Jo: Yeah, and really beautiful in different lights. I imagine you’ve obviously visited at different times of day. I feel like I was only there for about 10 minutes, but even then you can get all kinds of different shades in the rocks, as you said.

Let’s talk about Badwater Basin and, I guess, the salty areas.

Talk about those salt flats down there, and I guess why it’s also called Death Valley, because the day I was there, it was winter—it was November—and it was still damn hot.

Steve: Yeah, so Badwater itself is probably Death Valley’s most famous destination.

Around the Badwater Basin, there are some 200 square miles of salt flats. What makes it very special is that it’s the lowest spot in North America at minus 282 feet—282 feet below sea level. Badwater actually got its name because there was a surveyor in past times who brought his mule out and was in the area and led his mule up to the Badwater pool, which is a spring-fed little pool of water on the ground. The mule rejected it and refused to drink the salty water. So that’s why it got the name Badwater.

Visiting it is a unique experience, especially for first-timers, because you can go out there and stand at that special spot, get your picture next to the sign, and you can also look up at the hillside nearby and see a sea level sign. You can visualize in your mind just how far underneath the ocean you would be if you were at sea level right there. There’s also an endemic snail that lives only at that location at Badwater, so that’s really special too.

And if you look across the salt flats, across the valley, you can see the Panamint Range. The highest summit there in the Panamints, as well as all of Death Valley, is Telescope Peak at 11,049 feet. That’s quite a contrast—standing at minus 282 and looking up at 11,049 feet.

Another aspect to Badwater is that sometimes during flooding, that salt basin fills with water. This happened just a year ago and forms Lake Manly, and then you’ll find, as it goes viral, people out there kayaking and floating on the lake.

And isn’t that after the floods when it flowers?

Steve: Yes. In thinking about wildflowers in Death Valley, you need several distinct rain events.

If you just get one light period of rain—and keep in mind Death Valley is the hottest, driest, and lowest, meaning it gets less than two inches of annual rainfall—you’re not going to get a good wildflower season.

But if you get several periods of rain spread out among several months, then you’re going to get a good bloom. In fact, you could get a “super bloom.” I remember being there for the last big super bloom in 2016, and I think before that it was 2005. We just had vast fields of desert gold covering the landscape—an overwhelming amount of flowers, beauty beyond what you could imagine.

Jo: Yes. I mean, I only went for a day trip, so you only get a certain glimpse in a day. Of course, you’ve been hiking there for years.

But let’s get into why also, I guess, it’s so dangerous. There are tourist trips—it doesn’t have to be a dangerous place to visit—but —

What are some of the dangers of the valley?

Steve: There’s really a lot of dangers in Death Valley. In fact, I received an email from a hiker one time, and he mentioned that Death Valley is one of the most dangerous places on Earth to hike. I would definitely agree with that. It’s so important to be prepared and to know what you’re getting into out there.

The first thing that people often think about when it comes to dangers is the heat.

Sure enough, in the springtime, especially in the summer but also lingering into the fall, you have the extreme hot days. You have days when you shouldn’t even be out there hiking, but if the heat seems to be at a manageable level, it’s all about bringing enough water with you, enough sunscreen, knowing your body’s limitations, hiking early in the morning before it gets too hot—things like that.

Other dangers include flash floods. There are occasional flash floods that will sweep down canyons and wipe out park roads, which creates a whole different hazard. And then the wind can even be a hazard. There can be severe windstorms that come up. In fact, the wind can sometimes kick up really bad dust storms and sandstorms into the air. That’s caused by strong winds picking up the dust and sand off the ground and pushing it forward like a wall toward people.

I had a couple of experiences not too long ago where I was coming out of a hike to a place called The Crack. I looked off to my right, to the northwest, and saw what looked like a wall of dust coming toward me. It was scary. Fortunately, we were just getting back to my truck, so I said, “We better get there quickly and get in.” Right as we got to the truck, it swept over us. The wind came first, then all the dust, and we lost our visibility. I was glad we were inside, so our clothes and my eyes weren’t filled with dust.

 

Another experience: My parents own an RV or trailer, and they were parked at the Stovepipe Wells campground one day. My dad looked out the window of the trailer and could see a giant wall of dust and sand heading toward Stovepipe Wells. My parents got out and went to hide near the general store, and sure enough, the dust storm came through, rattled the trailer, and wreaked havoc on that whole area. He said afterward it took him a whole year to get all of the dust and sand out of the trailer and for it to work normally again—for the windows to be able to pop out and slide like they’re supposed to. It was quite a crazy situation.

Jo: Wow. You are reading my novel Death Valley, and I put in this big dust storm. When I wrote it, I read about these storms and I thought, “Is this really—could this really happen?” I know it’s terrible, but I’m grateful that you’ve said this is actually possible. And these storms, like you say, can just take everything out in their path, right?

Steve: Yeah, and in fact—obviously we can’t get into spoilers—but I love how you brought the storm into your novel. It reminded me that with climate change, scary things like that could actually happen. Climate change has already had a bad impact upon the park. Again, hopefully nothing like what I’ve been reading in your novel actually happens, but there certainly is the potential for that.

We’ve seen an increase in flash flooding that has caused road closure for many months at a time, with sections of the park closed off. We’ve also seen trees dying off, such as bristlecone pines, because they’re not getting the moisture and they’re getting too much heat. We’ve seen an increase in long, hot summers and higher temperatures going through the park, which makes it hard on wildlife that are already on the edge of survival, pushing them even further.

Well then, with all this danger, how come you have this film Last Chance Solo, where you went off on your own and solo? What draws you to this kind of solo adventure? We are definitely not recommending anyone do this, but you obviously love it. So talk a bit about solo adventure.

What are the rewards and the risks of solo adventure?

Steve: Yeah, so solo hiking and backpacking is not really my favorite thing to do. I have a core group of friends who I enjoy backpacking and hiking with out in Death Valley—such as Michelle, who’s one of my best friends—but not everyone is always available. A majority of my friends here at home, outside of the park, are not interested in the great challenges that are presented. So that’s what can lead me to go solo.

But going solo does create some difficult challenges. For one thing, you’re out there all alone, so if you get injured or hurt, it’s going to be more difficult to get out of there, to get help, and to make it through. Also, it can just be lonely out there, going for days on end hiking. It’s definitely not as fun.

You referenced my film Last Chance Solo, which was the very first feature film I ever attempted to do in Death Valley. It documents me doing six days of solo backpacking and hiking in the Last Chance Range. I believe when I started that out, I had to carry five and a half gallons of water because water sources are not always available in Death Valley. You’re not always going to find a spring or a source of water, so to do some of these routes, you’re going to need to do heavy water carries and bring them with you.

As far as why it can be difficult to get others to hike with you in Death Valley—well, it’s hard. There are very few trails in the park. You’re mostly creating your own routes as you go through peaks and canyons. There’s not a lot of established trails or routes. And of course, not a lot of people want to carry a lot of water. Then there’s terrain obstacles that you have to deal with—like rock climbs.

I had one friend named Curtis who, every five years, comes with me to the park to do hiking. But he tells me then, after he goes, “Well, you fooled me again. Maybe I’ll come back with you in another five years when I forget how difficult this is.”

Jo: Yes, I mean, I’ve done multi-day solo backpacking, but where I’ve stayed somewhere reasonable at night with shelter, and there’ve been shops on the way. That is not what happens in Death Valley. I mean, there is a little—it’s not a town, is it? Like you said, there’s a campground, there’s the visitor center, but it’s not like you can stop off and find water anywhere. You do have to go a ways.

So another thing about the visitor center when I got there was I noticed there’s a plaque saying this is a Dark Skies area. Tell us about that.

What is a Dark Sky park and why is that so special, and how cool is it at night?

Steve: It’s quite amazing. Dark Sky International certified Death Valley National Park as the third official Dark Sky National Park in the United States. A lot of work went into helping that happen. Actually, they were given the Gold Tier, which is the highest standard, the highest rating you can get for a national park. So it truly is a Dark Sky Park.

How that comes about and what it’s all about is negating as much light pollution as possible. You think about light pollution coming in from nearby cities, such as Las Vegas—it’s the closest one to Death Valley. You can’t really do anything about that, but Death Valley is far enough away that city light doesn’t have much of an impact, especially the farther north you go.

That’s just where you start—how far away the park is from cities. Then you have to think about the artificial lighting that is on buildings, on signs, shining around the villages you referenced, which are Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells. A lot of work had to go into changing out all those lights that were just shining indiscriminately—brightening up the area. Instead, new lights were installed that used less electricity and were angled downward to light up a path so people could walk safely, or to light up signs or buildings but without blinding people’s eyes. That’s what made it a successful Dark Sky Park—putting all the effort into that and getting certified.

You mentioned the Dark Sky Festival, which actually took place last week. I was there in Death Valley for the Dark Sky Festival, actually working at the Farm Creek Visitor Center, and then I hosted a telescope in the evening at what was known as the Star Party, where we had 25 to 30 telescopes out. We took in—I think it was 2,300 visitors—over the course of two days, who could look through our telescopes and hear a ranger-guided program.

The Dark Sky Festival is a very special event. There’s so much going on. There were auditorium programs, there was an exploration fair with booths for learning about things related to the sky and the stars, with scientists sharing information and things you could learn from. There were astrophotography meetups. There’s an incredibly talented photographer named Stephanie Lamar that lives and works in Death Valley and actually does wedding, engagement, and family photos, but she volunteered her time to lead groups out to the Mesquite flats—or to the Mesquite sand dunes and Harmony Borax—to help them learn astrophotography.

Then there were talks going on by scientists out at park locations such as Ubehebe Crater, Badwater, Golden Canyon, various spots to teach people things. And then, of course, the grand finale was the Star Party, which I mentioned, where we had all the telescopes out. On Friday night, I shared the Andromeda Galaxy with everybody, and on Saturday night, the Orion Nebula. It was just a fantastic event, organized and put together by my friend Matt, who works there in the park.

Jo: Mm, amazing. If people haven’t been to any of these dark-sky locations—they are around the world—but as you said, how much you can see the stars compared to what you see if you’re in the city is just totally different, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve been in a place in Western Australia, and I’ll never forget it. It was like, this is a completely different experience to living in a city and looking up at the sky.

Steve: Yeah, it’s totally different. There’s just no comparison. Just seeing the awe and wonder on some of the visitors’ faces as they look up at the sky—at one point there was a ranger looking at some of the constellations with a laser pointer and even reading poetry out there under the stars. It is just a totally different experience compared to going out where I live here in Sonoma, in California, and trying to look up. When I go out to Death Valley, I feel like I can see ten to a hundred times more stars.

Jo: In my thriller Death Valley, I have ruins under the luxury eco-hotel, and you said there might be a legend that echoes this theme. Tell us about the Lost City.

Steve: Yeah, you know, there’s this interesting story I came across. I do a lot of hiking and backpacking into undocumented areas of Death Valley to try to make discoveries. Of course, when I say “make discoveries,” I don’t mean I’m the first person to ever find these things, because we have Native Americans, miners, and who knows who else hiking off the grid, but I just try to go out into areas that people haven’t seen or heard of before and share things.

I went into this place called Trellis Canyon, which was just mentioned in passing in a guidebook, but there was only one sentence—no other information about it—just to see what was there. I hiked in there, went home, and published a report about my hike and shared photos, because I did have the largest website on Death Valley hiking in the world, which is now only available to park staff. That’s where I was sharing my hiking adventures at that time.

I started getting emails from people who identified themselves as a group of lawyers, doctors, adventure and thrill seekers who wanted more information about Trellis Canyon. As I gathered more details, I found out that this group believes there is a lost city of gold underneath the Panamint Mountains, and that the access point to get into the lost city of gold—where there’s supposedly tons of treasure, gold artifacts, as well as giant mummies preserved in underground caverns—they believe the entrance is through a cave in Trellis Canyon.

The interesting thing was they had spotted some “scorpions” on Google Earth above Trellis Canyon. Sure enough, I went on Google Earth, and I could see these two matching scorpions that were covering the landscape. As you’re following along on Google Earth, you see these two scorpions, and they do look out of place, admittedly. Anyway, the scorpions later disappeared from Google Earth, and this group felt that was a conspiracy to hide the entrance to the lost city of gold. Sure enough, I pushed the date back and it basically showed the satellite imagery had updated, and that’s why the scorpions were still visible but only at an earlier version of Google Earth.

So anyway, these people went out, backpacked, and some of them had never done it before. They tried to get into the lost city, but they never did find it. I do hear of them going back from time to time to continue searching for it.

Jo: I love it. I think that’s brilliant. Now, that might be a myth, but there is evidence, as you said, of mining, and also you mentioned the Native American people.

Talk a bit more about the Native American people and also the mining in Death Valley

Steve: Well, yeah, that’s a good thing to talk about because when we look at human history, we can say it starts with the Timbisha Shoshone. They’ve inhabited the Death Valley region for some 1,000-plus years, so they’ve been there a long time. Then, of course, in modern times, miners came in and tourists came in, and the Timbisha Shoshone found themselves displaced. They seemed to have endured quite a bit of mistreatment and loss of the areas they wanted to live in for about 65 years. But then, in the year 2000, there was the Timbisha Homeland Act that was signed into law, and that gave them back a portion of their ancestral homeland and some of their rights. Hopefully things continue to move positively for them.

Then, of course, we might think about mining in Death Valley. That got started in the late 1850s, as far as records can show, and picked up in the successive decades. There was gold, there was silver, there was borax, talc, salt—those were some of the things that were mined in Death Valley. Some good examples of that: Keane Wonder Mine is a really neat place to visit—that’s where you might find that gold was mined. There’s Panamint City, which was famous for the silver that was mined there. There’s Harmony Borax, which is where what’s called “white gold” was mined, and white gold is borax.

That proved to be a very successful mining operation and brought a lot of Death Valley history with 20-mule-team wagons hauling out refined borax from 1883 to 1889 on a journey that went over 165 miles to get that borax hauled out of Death Valley. Modern tourism, of course, got started as people began taking an interest in the valley. It was established as a national monument in 1933, and then a national park in 1994.

Jo: Mm, yeah. I guess with the indigenous people there, there’s climate change, but you also want people to visit, you want people to appreciate the beauty, and also bring their tourist dollars. So where’s the balance?

How can the average tourist visit and have a good time in the park but also respect the people and the land?

Steve: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m glad you brought that up, because it’s so important for visitors to be aware as they come into Death Valley National Park. I think it kind of starts just as you come in, to make sure to pay your entrance fees to provide that financial support to the park and not try to dodge it.

Also, just becoming familiar with basic park regulations—which I like to call common-sense things—such as not driving off park roads. For instance, if somebody drives off a park road onto a playa or lake bed or the salt flats, that leaves tire tracks that won’t be worn away for decades, and it also damages the habitat, the life in that soil. So there’s that.

It’s just basic things like camping only where you’re supposed to, in designated sites, not leaving graffiti, not picking wildflowers, not collecting rocks or artifacts and taking them home, but leaving them in place for future visitors. Leaving no trace when you’re hiking or backpacking—so not leaving any garbage or anything behind. Also not feeding the wild animals or birds. We haven’t touched on those very much, but protecting them by leaving them to care for themselves naturally.

There’s something kind of important going on right now nationally where park employees in Death Valley, as well as other national parks, are being fired for no reason. There’s a downsizing effort underway, and this isn’t coming from within Death Valley but from higher sources. That’s something we really can’t have. In my opinion, we’re underfunded and understaffed in Death Valley, and it hurts the park now and in the long term to not have enough people to properly take care of it. That’s something people can hopefully counteract by writing letters and making phone calls. But yeah, we definitely need our park employees.

Jo: Hmm, absolutely.

Tell people where they can find your films and what else they can find on your YouTube channel.

Steve: Starting in about the year 2020, I shifted gears from doing written hiking reports on my website to actually filming my adventures because I found it more interesting. I have a couple of Death Valley series on my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com/steveHallDV.

I have my Death Valley Adventure films, which I’ve currently filmed six of. Those are basically three-plus-day backpacking adventures into locations that very few people have ever been to or seen—really super special places that park visitors don’t usually go to. Those often involve heavy water carries for those three days, because there’s often not water available. Those are quite exciting. It’s quite a privilege to be able to showcase some of these amazing spots that people don’t get to see.

Then I have my Death Valley Discovery series, which currently stands at 20 episodes, where I’m going out to places that I, park staff, other hikers, or friends discovered. Again, using the term “discovery” a little lightly, because we don’t claim to be the first people to ever walk through these areas, but we’re the first to publish reports and document them. So that’s what those two series of videos cover. I also hike in places such as the South Pacific and the Arctic on my channel.

Jo: Yeah, and it’s a fantastic resource, so go and check that out everyone. Well, thanks so much for your time, Steve. That was great.

Steve: Yeah, it was really nice talking with you. I really enjoyed talking with you about Death Valley, and I’ve enjoyed reading your novel, and I’m sure so many people are going to love that.