6/5/2018
I am well known for being more than a little bullheaded
about strange things. Generally I’m a pretty easygoing human being, but I don’t
take too well to being told what I can’t do.
So that’s why when the ranger this morning said, “You
absolutely should not go hiking in the Valley of Fire today, it is supposed to
be 111*F and the reflection of the sun off of the sandstone will bake you like
a potato, DO NOT HIKE TODAY,” I suddenly had this urge to go hike every trail
in the park.
Now, I’m not condoning this. As a former park service
employee, I must advise you to always hike well within your limits. The last
thing that you want is to be another blurb in the news.
But given that I had just spent a few days surviving the
120*F+ interior of my vintage car for hours on end with no respite and without
resorting to using the AC, I felt that I had proven to be quite heat resistant
and that hiking would probably be just fine for me.
And so I marched (well, drove) right up the road past the
visitor’s center towards the heart of the Valley of Fire, intending to hike
every trail in the park before midafternoon.
At first, the road wound its way
through a narrow canyon, massive deep red rocks looming close on all sides.
But then suddenly I rounded a bend, and the valley opened
up in front of me. I was not at all prepared for the kaleidoscope of colors
displayed in the myriad of craggy rocks and low hills in the valley. Where I
had expected to continue to see deep red rocks, I instead saw hues of purple
and orange and red and gold, all swirled together in fantastic patterns by the
erosion of millennia. This place is beyond anything I’ve ever seen.
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| Just a little car in a big, big world |
Eventually I found myself on the trail to the Fire Wave,
Valley of Fire’s most famous sandstone formation. Fortunately, the rangers’
strong suggestions had warned everyone else off of the trail, so I was alone
save for one other hiker. Temps were in the mid 90’s (and climbing, I suppose),
and a smart breeze skidded across the rocks, lifting heat and fine dust into the
air. In other words, I thought that it was very nice out and that it was quite
a pleasant time for a hike.
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| This sign disagrees. |
The trail to the Fire Wave is not a long one – only ¾ of
a mile or so. I wound my way through the reds and oranges and purples of this
place, feeling almost in a different world. I didn’t see any animals save for a
few lizards – I guess the heat warded the rest off. The near-perfect silence
was sublime.
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| Pictured: a couple of lizards. |
One would expect that the geological story of such a
crazy looking outcrop would be complex. But far from it, this particular rock’s
swirling waves of color are entirely a result of the angled and varied erosion
of flat-lying sandstone layers, each a different color. When eroded back at an
angle, a thin bed may appear elongated and “smeared”. It is entirely fortune,
then, that this rock was eroded in such a spectacular way. And that kind of
makes it even more special.
After poking around the Fire Wave for a bit, I moved on
to the next trail: White Domes. There, I saw the much more craggy end of the
valley, with rocks thrown up into disarray by the faulting and folding that
created the valley. I have to admit that it did not impress when compared with
the Fire Wave, though it would have been very impressive had I seen it first.
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| I did see a cool rock shaped like a fish scale though. |
From there I moved back down south along the road and
briefly hiked the Rainbow Vista trail, which showcased the sandy valley floor
and some more varied outcrops. Finally, I ended up on Mouse’s Tank, a trail
that ended at a natural “tank” – a divot in the valley surrounded by large
rocks that naturally funneled and retained water. But the tank wasn’t the part
of the trail that I was most interested in. No, this trail’s wealth lies in the
abundance of petroglyphs carved into the desert varnish along the canyon trail.
Where normally you see petroglyphs carved in small groups, here hundreds would
appear on the same rock, often overlying each other as if the ones who carved
them had too much to say to fit in the available space.
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| No petroglyphs here, just a funky skinny huge slab of rock standing upright. |
It is awe-inspiring to look on petroglyphs and consider
the people who lived here before. Though now we have abundant food, water, and
air conditioning available at our fingertips, rangers still must warn us
against hiking in hot temperatures for fear of injury. But back when these
petroglyphs were carved, none of those things were available. Water was scarce,
food was limited mostly to lizards, and air conditioning was found in the form
of a shaded overhang. And yet still people lived here, finding some worth in
it. Imagining their tenacity makes me feel more than a little lame.
But even that slight feeling of shame did not overwhelm
my reluctance to camp out another night. While I had intended to stay in the
Valley of Fire for two nights, I found that I had hiked every open trail by
early in the afternoon. The prospect of going back to my campsite to sit in the
111*F heat for hours waiting for nightfall did not appeal to me. Worse, last
night had been dreadfully hot until the early hours of the morning – I had checked
the temperature at 11PM, and it was still 93*F! I can sleep in that kind of
heat, but it’s really just unpleasant.
So I hopped in Jane and scooted off to Vegas, where I
took advantage of the $17 room special at Circus Circus, had a nice steak, and
sat in the air conditioning comfortably. My ancestors would have been jealous.
Kelly signing out.
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