Return to Death Valley Summer 2026

Travails of summer, the flood aftermath, and a bit of fire.

The last time we went to Death Valley National Park, we stood on the shore of a lake refilling Badwater Basin. A puddle compared to the 600 foot deep Lake Manly of ages past, it was still beautiful.  Also deep enough that the Park Service allowed kayaks.  That was in the first days of 2024.  Then life, and caring for aging parents, intervened for over a year and a half.

In Arizona, we think of summer as starting when we begin to have 100 degree Fahrenheit days, which can be in the later part of May.  It’s a dry heat…  After our Tucson grandson and his parents fled Tucson for somewhat cooler Colorado, we went to Massachusetts to visit another grandson and his parents in early June.  We intended to go to Death Valley after that.

We returned to Tucson from Massachusetts on a Friday evening.  I turned our 31 year old primary AC unit on.  The next morning the ¾ of the house it fed still had not cooled down to the upper 70s, which was odd.  And too warm.  The return coolant line from the outdoor compressor was iced over.  Google Gemini told me that either the refrigerant had leaked out or the internal heat exchanger had iced over, which has happened before.  I tried the thaw-out procedure.  Nope.  So that meant the ancient Armstrong AC had finally lost its ozone-depleting Freon, which hadn’t happened since we bought the house in 1996.  In theory, the Armstrong was repairable, but getting Freon would be worse than pulling teeth, not to mention being environmentally irresponsible.  Besides, we had retrofitted our house with the electrical circuits to handle heat pumps.  My wife and son had then counseled me to wait until an AC unit failed before replacing it.  So this one had finally failed, of course when it was over 100 outside.

My son, who has managed the construction of big apartment complexes back east, had used a Mitsubishi heat pump for his house based on recommendations from the folks he knew.  I found a Mitsubishi installer in Tucson.  They would show up on Monday.  Sunday night I started feeling like I had a nasty cold.  The estimate guy Paul turned up Monday afternoon. He knew his stuff.  He said he would get me a quote that day.  He did.  In the meantime, I was feeling feverish.  My wife Pam picked up Flu/Covid tests from Walgreens.  I tested negative for influenza, but positive for Covid.  Probably acquired on the airplane ride home.

Paul set me a quote.  I accepted it.  In the meantime, we were running a high velocity (noisy) fan to move air from our bedroom and bathroom to the rest of the house, setting up a gradient from the mid 70s to the mid to upper 80s.  Unfortunately, our daytime work areas were at the warm end of the house.  Also unfortunately, my wife Pam got Covid on Thursday, despite our isolation attempts.

By Tuesday, 11 days after getting home, we had a functioning Mitsubishi heat pump.  It uses about ⅔ of the electricity the old Armstong did, and it’s very quiet.  I was testing negative for Covid.  Pam was getting over her case.  Life was better.

We were healthy again. Our house was comfortable. We had no parents or other relatives in Tucson to keep an eye on. I asked Pam, shall we go to Death Valley?  Yep.  I lined up rooms at Furnace Creek Ranch for July 11-19, although we thought we might not stay that long–https://www.oasisatdeathvalley.com/lodging/the-ranch-at-death-valley/.

Unlike an airplane ride, we could take everything we thought we might need in our RAV4 Hybrid. We had our own clothes and supplies, plus two crates of emergency supplies, plus the second spare tire.  We were a bit concerned about leaving because our latest hummingbird, Shadow Bird, was tending a nest perched on the electrical cord going to our garage door opener, so we left the garage door partially open, with a neighbor keeping an eye on our plants, plus an Arlo camera watching the opening.  While we were in Death Valley, the camera recorded a mangy raccoon in the night and Shadow Bird in the day.  Shadow Bird has since hatched and reared Ace and Chance.

On Saturday July 11, we drove to Furnace Creek Ranch.  We went to our room and found its AC on but the room was still 89 degrees.  Whoops, again.  We went to dinner at the Last Kind Words Saloon.  We found the room somewhat cooler when we returned.  After going to sleep a bit warm, it cooled down to the 70s, so we didn’t try to change rooms.

On Sunday, we went to the Furnace Creek Visitor Center.  The DV NP rangers told us the boardwalk at Salt Creek and the road through Titus Canyon had been repaired post flood.  So off to Salt Creek, then Badwater.  Titus Canyon was a bit too far, plus a bit dangerous in summer.

When we reached the Salt Creek turn off, we found the gate open for the first time in several years.  The road in had been graded after becoming partially buried in fine sand. We drove into the parking area. There was a new nice boardwalk at the west end.  Plus a new restroom.

What the parking area (gone) and restroom looked like in early 2024–

We started walking on the boardwalk.  To our pleasant surprise, the creek was flowing fairly well.  Sometimes in summer it has reduced to a trickle, with the pupfish retreating upstream to the more permanent pools.

Here’s a gallery of photos from the Salt Creek boardwalk. It’s about 0.8 miles. It’s a lollipop shape, with a single walkway that split into a rough circle.

From Salt Creek, we drove past Furnace Creek south to Badwater Basin, the lowest place in North America at -282 feet. In 2024, it had been a shallow lake.

We headed back up to Furnace Creek for a nice dinner at Last Kind Words. The AC situation was tenuous, but manageable. On Monday, July 13, we took a road trip to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White-Inyo Mountains, the next range west of the Panamints.  We went north from Furnace Creek through Beatty Nevada, coming up to the spine of the White-Inyos from the east side, a route we had never taken before.  Here’s a map that Apple Siri made in Apple Maps from my description.  Furnace Creek is in the lower right, the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the upper left.

Beatty was rustic to say the least, with lots of wild burros.  Notice where we went northwest from Beatty, then turned sharply west, crossing the Palmetto Mountains.  There we came upon the Palmetto ghost town. Palmetto was a community that rose and fell more than once with a silver mine that was never successful.

Not far from Palmetto, we climbed to the spine of the White-Inyos.  Then we took the road north to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest Visitors Center in Schulman Grove at 10,000 feet.  It was rainy and cold, so we put on a layer or two.  The Visitors Center didn’t look familiar.  Inside I learned the previous one had burned down in 2008 in an arson fire.  My last trip to the area, when I continued on to the Patriarch Grove, was in 2005.  We looked around the Visitors Center, then started up the 1 mile loop Discovery Trail. We turned back when it started to rain again.  Here’s a young Bristlecone, maybe less than 200 years old.

Here’s a gallery of photos from Schulman Grove and the Visitor Center–

We got back to the RAV 4 Hybrid, warmed up and headed south.  I had hoped to find a place to stop with a good view of the Range of Light– the Sierra Nevada–but this is the best I could do given the conditions.

We dropped down the western side of the White-Inyos to Big Pine, then took US 395 south to Lone Pine.  We stopped briefly at the Eastern Sierra Visitor Center.  Here’s the flag at half mast for the death of Senator Lindsey Graham.  The Sierras are in the background shrouded in clouds with traces of snow.

From the Visitor Center, we went east across the White-Inyos again, albeit much further south.  The drive from Lone Pine to Furnace Creek is remarkably scenic, but we stopped at Father Crowley Vista Point, which has a spectacular view of Rainbow Canyon.

Heere are a few more photos–

Tuesday morning July 14th, Pam and I both went walking from our room, although on different routes.  I went west from the motel units, then north through the golf course on Tamarisk Trail, a dirt road framed by tamarisk trees.  I turned around at the small lakes.

Furnace Creek Ranch and Inn are lush and green, a stark contrast with the landscape all around.  Their water comes from Travertine Springs and Texas Springs, which can supply up to 2,000,000 gallons per day of potable water. Here are more photos from my walk. The water station had a jug with very cold water. The final 3 photos feature a very healthy-looking coyote. Earlier I had seen rabbits.

After another pleasant breakfast at The Ranch 1849 Restaurant (actually a buffet), we decided to go up to Dante’s View which is directly east of Badwater Basin, but 5476 feet above it on the crest of the Black Mountains.  We wanted to see what the valley floor looked like after partial refilling of Lake Manly, then drying out.  It’s a fairly quick trip from the Ranch on a scenic drive that goes past Ryan, the borax mine that was the basis of the area economy from 1914 until 1927, when some of it was converted to the Death Valley View Hotel.

At Dante’s View it was almost cool, with a strong breeze.  Looking at the valley floor, it was apparent that the dried lake had left a white salt crust much larger in extent than what we had seen the last time we were at Dante’s View in 2018.  Here’s a view of the valley taken from next to the parking area. The lake has been filling and emptying for tens of thousands of years. Since it’s a closed drainage basin, sediments and salts have accumulated to a depth of perhaps as much as 11,000 feet, the height of Telescope Peak in the background of the photo.

Death Valley had floods in 2023, 2024, and 2025 that partially refilled Lake Manly. The best photo I have showing what the valley floor looked like before the floods was taken with a GoPro Hero in 2015 when Pam and I biked from the Highway 190 junction up to Dante’s View and back down.

There are short trails along the ridge line south and north of the parking lot. We went both directions. Here are some photos, plus a panorama I took stopped by the roadside on the way back down.

From Dante’s View, we went back to the Furnace Creek Visitor Center and wandered around the displays inside. Here’s the obligatory photo of the famous thermometer outside. For Death Valley, it was a bit cool while we were there.

We had a nice dinner at Last Kind Words, then spent a moderately uncomfortable night in our motel room. The air conditioning seemed to have gone on strike, cutting out erratically. In all the dozens of times we’ve stayed at the ranch, we haven’t encountered an AC issue until now. When we checked out the next morning, I described the problem to a clerk who seemed a bit confused. We headed home to Tucson, thinking about when we might return next, possibly in the coming winter.