Our New Year's Day Hike
Fred and I have a tradition of hiking on New Years Day.  For 2024, we took friends to the top of Red Mountain and across its beautiful plateau to a high point dubbed "On Top of the World" by our friend Dan.  From here, you stand 1,400 feet over an outstanding view of Snow Canyon's petrified yellow sand dunes and orange ridges, black basalt flows from northern volcanoes near Veyo.  It's worth the orange sand trudge on the top to get there.  This short, five-mile hike packs in a good variety of terrain.  The first mile climbs steeply through a cliff band requiring some fun Class 3 (un-roped using hands to climb) maneuvers, gaining 1,300 feet.  The next 1.5 miles initially descends through a beautiful juniper woodland bowl where Gunsight Pass can be reached to the southeast. You will trek through sand, washes, over slick rock then climb to a sandy saddle where our "On Top of the World" high point can finally be seen.   Then it's a matter of making a ~0.5-mile beeline to it across relatively level terrain, traversing minor washes, dodging cacti and prickly shrubs. 

​When you top-off onto Red Mountain's plateau, you initially follow the north/south Red Mountain Primitive Trail for ~1.2 miles, then a short jaunt off of it to the northeast to reach On Top of the World, elevation 4,765'.  Red Mountain Primitive Trail's northern trailhead is located just north of Diamond Cinder Cone on Utah Highway 18.

​It's a fun little scramble to the cairned top, using your hands a few times to climb easy rocks, overlooking Padre Canyon and Tuacahn Center for the Arts to the southeast.  Once you summit, the rugged terrain drops steeply below with a breathtaking view of Snow Canyon, with a few smooth slick rock benches above it that look interesting to explore or camp in.

Can't think of a better way to celebrate the New Year:  friends and the reward of finding our own way to a seldom-visited summit in one of the most beautiful places in the southwest.  Great "medicine" for the soul, body and mind.

Our Trip - Badwater Basin, Artist's Palette Peak, Sheephead Mountain
On August 20, 2023, Tropical Storm Hilary dumped a year's worth of rainfall on Death Valley National Park, transforming famous Badwater Basin into a spectacular sight: a huge turquoise-colored, salt-rimmed lake reflecting massive mountains on both sides.  This rare occurrence is reminiscent of Pleistocene Lake Manly, a deep ice-age body of water that once filled this basin and dried up about 10,000 years ago.  Although not as deep and extensive as its predecessor, it was still an amazing sight to see, especially at sunset.  Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America, is normally a salt flat cut into hexagons, and freeze/thaw hummocks - soft yet crunchy to walk on.  Fred and I had hurried from Shoshone Village, a 45-minute drive to the southeast, to get there by sunset.  There were a few other photographers, their mirror-images appearing unbroken in the still, shallow, and salty water.  It was so quiet and remote that we could hear their conversations.  

​For the past three years, we have stayed and hiked in the Death Valley National Park area during the Christmas holiday.  In 2021, we hiked Pahrump Point out of Chicago Valley in the Nopah mountains with our friend Scott.  In 2022, Fred and I hiked the awesome Pyramid Peak in the Funeral Mountains, and in 2023 we got to experience the magic of Badwater Basin's reflections and also hike Artists Palette Peak and Sheephead Mountain in the Ibex Wilderness. Hikes are challenging in Death Valley, a rough and rocky place - remote, stoic and mysterious.  That's why we love it.  A land that has experienced a lot of turmoil, yet stands defiant.

How Long will Badwater Basin's Lake Last?
The depth of the lake was about four inches where I stood after walking through thick (and sharp!) salt deposits at  the lake margins.  The evaporation rate in Death Valley is 120-150 inches per year.  I read one source that stated the depth was two feet right after the storm.  The evaporation rate is the highest in the U.S., so get out and see it soon!  The Landsat images below show relative evaporation in 10.5 weeks (images 2 and 3).  Note that the northern, smaller body of water appears to have mostly dried up already.

The obstacle in the above photo is where another Artist's Palette Peak hiker who recorded his trip on Peakbagger website turned around.  Stav Basis, in his route description of this hike advises that if you are hiking Twenty Mule Team Canyon to ascend it rather than descend it to make sure you can maneuver the Class 3+ stuff and you don't get stuck.

​The next canyon we attempted to the northwest of Twenty Mule Team Canyon had footprints in it, possibly from a group of hikers we saw at the trailhead.  We followed it, fun scrambling over easy walls, until we were diverted out of the canyon to see a steep and loose talus slope with no end in sight.  It's frustrating to know that "obstacles" like this get in your way of seeing your intended peaks and knowing there was less-steep terrain above.  But that's why off-trail route finding in Death Valley is so rewarding - you have really earned the view from the summit and the access to the peak register.

Sheephead Mountain  (13 ascents on Peakbagger - A Sierra Club Desert Peaks Section Peak)
I had been looking forward to hiking in the Ibex Wilderness, so the next day when we hiked to Sheephead Mountain, we were remote and alone, except for the occasional motorist on Highway 178, which begins at Shoshone, then heads west through two passes to turn north as it becomes Badwater Road, hugging the east side of Death Valley.  We parked in a pull-out at Salsberry Pass, about 12 miles from Shoshone.

The faint trail that headed southeast toward Sheephead soon became non-existent, so the approach was a maze of red washes and rubbly hills.  We located our daunting-looking mountain to the south.  We ascended a rotten, slippery and steep ridge of yellow scree too soon.  Once we got on top of this yellow high point, we realized it would have been easier to ascend the red ridge just to the south, leading more directly to the saddle on the final ridge to Sheephead, which looked like a tower with more loose scree slopes flanking its sides.  We didn't have the motivation in us to attempt the rock piles.  From the saddle we found an easier way down over a ridge and then dropping into a wash.  We instead walked back to the highway, crossing it and wandering on a ridge toward Salsberry Peak, seeing occasional bighorn sheep signs.

Wrap-Up of 2023 hiking - The Year of Grudge Peaks
This year we did more remote desert route-planning and finding on unmarked terrain with no trails in Utah's Zion Wilderness and San Rafael Swell, Nevada and Death Valley.  Occasionally we see cairns that let us know some other hardy souls had stood in the same place.  Walking without a trail takes more time.   As a result, we had more "grudge peaks" this year - ones where we did not make the summit.  Mummy Mountain was the most frustrating;  we were within 200 feet of the summit and ran into a deep and steep snow-filled gully with no great footing to get out of it to a narrow shelf to the top.  Scott, Fred and I will hopefully try this summit again but from the more-used trail on other side of the mountain.  Other "grudges" this year were Hepworth in Zion, and Bearing Peak in Lake Mead National Park.  Moapa's knife's edge we're not sure we would attempt again.  Successful summits included Shelly Baldy in the Tushars, Mt. Kimball in Tucson, Jackson Peak near Boise, and Burger Peak in Pine Valley Mountains.  And, the summit of Angels Landing was sweet because we got to hike it with my sis and bro-in-law.

One of my favorite authors, Willa Cather famously said, "The road is all, the end is nothing."  As far as reaching summits, I would have to respectfully disagree.  The way to the summit is a great experience, but to stand on the summit after you've worked hard to climb it is even sweeter.

So, is it our age or the pursuit of more technically challenging hikes that are preventing us from reaching our goals?  I like to think it's a little of the first and mostly the last of those two reasons.  Should we focus less on goals and more on appreciating just "being out there?" - not to always define "success" as achieving a summit?  Of course, I love being out there in our American West, but my goal-driven trait wants more.  At any rate, it's been fun to try something different and work on navigation skills in more remote country.  I count myself as one of the lucky ones who gets to even consider this conundrum in the first place.

References
Fish, N.  From Indiana University.  https://sierra.sitehost.iu.edu/papers/2008/fish.html
Doermann, L.  NASA Earth Observatory.  Floodwaters Fill Badwater Basin.
Hunt, C.B., et al.  1966.  Hydrologic Basin Death Valley California.  Geological Survey Professional Paper 494-B.