How mean was my valley . . . . ?

By KEVIN JONES

There is no greater contrast in landscape on the globe than the one that awaits you as you continue your road trip around California by heading out of magical, lush Yosemite to the postively Martian terrain of the hottest place in the United States - Death Valley.

In the space of half a day's solid driving, you will trade in the magnificence of Yosemite Valley, with its massive granite peaks and dense forests, for one the starkest, most godforesaken areas not just of California but of the world itself.

Which is not to say that Death Valley is ugly. It has an awesome beauty all of its own but more on that later.

A good method of wending your way out of Yosemite before heading south-east for Death Valley is to head for Tuolumne Meadows and on towards the Tioga Pass.

The High Sierra scenery is terrific with some memorably massive sequoias accompanying you on your way and enough breaktaking views to ease the pain of leaving Yosemite Valley behind.

Tioga Pass will take you out of the true High Country and you then head vaguely south for the next stage of your Californian adventure.

As you head along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, you will pass a handful of largely faceless small towns dotted along the way. They are so markedly different to the glamourous, postcardy California conurbations along the mega-rich coastal zones and are quite stunningly drab, at least to this writer's eye.

They do, however, have one thing in their favour - location, location, location. There is Yosemite to the north, Kings Canyon National Park and the Sierra to the immediate west and, of course, Death Valley to the south.

As you get closer to Death Valley in the summer, you notice a gradual and relentless rise in the temperature. The Valley is hemmed in by nine mountain ranges and, as a result, is shielded from winds and rain. Hence, its temperatures just keep on rising.

By the time you get to the edges of the Valley itself, you start to see the ominous warning signs on the roadside, telling you to not just ensure you have enough petrol and oil in your car, but to stock up big-time on water - for you and your vehicle.

The Valley is an unforgiving place and you will be warned repeatedly as you drive through not to wander too far away from your vehicle and to stick to tried and trusted paths and tracks.

When I visited the Valley, the hire car I shared with my travel companion had lost its air-conditioning system, courtesy of a burst gas hose. Boy, did we miss it. We arrived at Stovepipe Wells in late afternoon and the temperature, according to the locals, was a "comfortable" 103 degrees fahrenheit (40-oddC).

As we headed further south towards our destination - the aptly named Furnace Creek - the heat intensified and, as the mercury climbed to 110, we realised we were cooler with the windows up! Every time we opened them in a vain bid for some "fresh air", we were treated to a red-hot blast, akin to opening the door on a baker's oven.

Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek are the nearest Death Valley gets to "civilisation".

There is no township at Furnace Creek - we failed to see a creek either - but there is a hotel resort, golf course and a camping area next door.

When summer nights fall in the desert, you are amazed by the rapid drop in the temperature - the air temperature, that is. The ground is too hot to walk upon barefoot until quite late and my mate and I abandoned ideas of pitching a tent ("How would we hammer in the pegs?")

Also, rather than just pitch sleeping bags on the desert floor ("Do they have scorpions here? We've already heard about the tarantulas"), we opted to sleep on a table each in the nearby barbecue area.

In fact, we didn't even consider getting to sleep until after we had invited ourselves into the hotel complex to spend several hours in the beautiful swimming pool while sipping cleansing ales for dutch courage.

Once summer days break, the temperature quickly begins its steady rise back into three Fahrenheit figures and it's time to get moving because you are going to feel more like seeing Death Valley's wonders while you have only a moderate torrent of sweat running down your spine.

The Valley is around 200 kilometres long but only about 20 kilometres wide. It has a good quality road running right down the centre. The scenery is magnificent as you head south, with the distant, massive peaks of the jagged Panamint Range to your right and the rugged Amargosa Range to your left.

The National Park is enormous - at 3 million acres, it is the biggest in the United States outside of Alaska - and the contrasts are confronting. Death Valley's peaks get as high as 11,000 feet, yet 550 square miles of the park is below sea level.

One much-photographed area, Badwater, is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 86 metres below sea level. It is aptly named, as the smelly, mineral-rich pond there is anything but drinkable.

"Badwater" is one of several grim, doom-and-gloom names to be found in Death Valley, so named because it claimed their lives of more than a few early settlers in previous centuries. As you wind through the Valley, you'll come across places with names like Funeral Mountains, Coffin Peak, Hell's Gate, Starvation Canyon and Dead Man Pass. They are as eerie and spooky as they sound.

Badwater is just to the south of Furnace Creek and is one of several much-visited sites in a compact area of the park.

In close proximity are the Artists' Palette, an amazing section of cliffs and rocks in every colour and shade you can think of, courtesy of the mineral deposits they contain; the Devil's Golf Course; Zabriskie Point (yes, the one they named the movie after) and Dante's Peak.

They are just some of the delights and they are listed here just to give you a start.

Our visit to Death Valley was during the summer. The Valley, of course, being so mountainous, is like any other desert zone - an area of massive extremes.

People tend to get blown away by the fact that Death Valley is not hot all year round. Winter can bring snow on the passes and roads north, west and south might be closed for a period of time. Carry chains if you're driving through in winter.

The Valley doesn't get a lot of rainfall but when rain arrives, as it often does in Spring and Autumn, it tends to come in a big hurry, resulting in flash flooding in the canyons. These two seasons do boast the most pleasant weather conditions for the tourist - with temperatures averaging at a very passable 30C or so.

When you've had your fill of Death Valley, it's time to move on to the next, penultimate phase of our California road trip - across the Mojave Desert to Southern California and a return to the coast at San Diego. Remember to fill up with water!

Los Angeles
Santa Barbara and Highway One
Big Sur
Monterey and Carmel
San Francisco
Yosemite