Talk to anyone who’s visited Death Valley in the past 20 years about the view from Zabriskie Point at sunrise, and you’re likely to get the same perspective:
Beautiful, dramatic, crowded, hell.
I mean, it truly is one of the most beautiful and dramatic scenes from all across the park – and with luck on your side, it can deliver some amazing sunrises (and sunsets) with rock formations that come alive, layer by layer, for as far as the eye can see.
But catch it wrong (just after a tour bus or large group workshop) – or during any sort of peak travel period – and you’ll find yourself sharing that experience with hundreds of others, many with tripods, on both upper and lower vantage points; all trying to get that shot.
The problem is, “that shot”, is the same one that’s been taken time and time again. While I love the view, and could spend (and have spent) hours there watching it change along with the light, every now and then you just get a craving for something new.
Enter the weather of 2022, 2023 and 2024.
In all the decades (ouch!) that I’ve now been visiting Death Valley, I’ve never known this a spell of storms, rain, floods and damage caused by changing climate and weather in the park, over such a sustained period of time.
It’s crazy to think of the “hottest place on earth” (and driest place in North America) being rained out for weeks at a time – even more shocking when we saw the pictures of entire roads and buildings being washed away in the floods that followed.
Luckily, I’ve not been caught in any of the disaster-level issues in the park, but there’s still something night quite right about all those palm trees and desert settings on a rainy day…
But all of this weather does bring with it some positives (if you can look at it that way) – including the great “reset” of Lake Manly, covering the Badwater Basin area of salt flats for months on end.
Witnessed from the top of Dante’s View at sunrise, the sheer scale of change to this area is obvious for all to see with its brand new bright green salt lake – as this iPhone shot from 2024 shows off…
…when compared to this iPhone shot of that same view, only this time filled with the arid, muddy, salty ground from only two years prior in 2022:
(Fun fact – it’s from Dante’s View and Telescope Peak that you can see both the lowest point in North America, Badwater Basin at 282 feet below seal level, and the highest point in the contiguous United States, Mt. Whitney, at 14,505 feet.)
However, what all this change has meant, is those “unique views” that people have been hunting across the valley for years have all suddenly come out to play.
What was once a sea of endless hexagonal salt flats, has become an infinite mirror along the valley floor – prompting photographers from far and wide to capture stunning reflections before things dry out once again.
Even when the calm air gives way to new storm clouds and breezes, the insane scale of Death Valley still manages to deliver the goods when we put humans in-frame for perspective.
Of course, the transient nature of Lake Manly (and recovering cycles of more “standard” weather in the valley) has meant that certain parts of the landscape have already started to recover. Devil’s Golf Course has begun to re-emerge as a salt-crusted lunar landscape further north from Badwater Basin.
And while things are still settling down, it’s meant that our good-old-reliable Zabriskie Point location has become a little more “spicy” in terms of what it delivers each morning with less predictable weather than we’ve been used to in the past.
A “normal” morning, for long periods over the past few years, has changed due to the impact of all that moisture in the air – delivering fresh structures and cloud formations in the sky that feel very different to so many that I can recall from past visits.
While I’ve started to get used to those clouds at Zabriskie Point since the first big floods, it was what arrived on one particular morning that offered up a scene that I definitely wasn’t expecting.
Could it be…? In Death Valley…? Is that…?
Fog?
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’ve been in Death Valley during thick, low cloud before – to the point where we couldn’t see a thing. The existence of vision-reducing moisture in the air isn’t an entirely new thing here.
But this was different – this was sweeping across the valley floor like a carpet, beneath our vantage point, contained by the very hills we were stood upon and somehow managing to avoid blocking the view.
It seems it had been raining all night and the ground was once again fully saturated with water during the cool period before dawn (I can’t see how it could have physically absorbed any more at this point in the season).
Throw in the rapid change in air temperature that comes from the arrival of sunrise, and you quickly find yourself shifting gears from “ah, it’s another cloudy morning” (with camera nestled neatly in your bag) to “Oh s__t! Why isn’t my camera already set up for this? Quick!”
Luckily, I’m not slow at getting set up – and it was lucky, as this all happened in a matter of minutes as the rising warmth of sunrise dragged that cool layer of moist air up, across and through to the rock formations below our hill, straight towards us.
There were fleeting moments of shapes forming in the mist as it ebbed and flowed across the zebra’d erosions that make up the foothills of the Amargosa Range. Nothing stayed constant or still as it continued to creep forward.
As the fog made its way on up to us, it began to wipe out the definition of the valley beyond – but by this point, it didn’t matter.
I’d stopped clicking; I hoped I had my shots – it was time to just watch and enjoy.
Shot on Phase One
So how did those 151MP shots turn out? (I wondered, with unjustified paranoia, hoping that at least one of my memory cards would make it back to the hotel without loss!)
Pretty good – I’d say – especially when it was simply a “lucky break”…
Up close, that eerie sea of mist at the margins of the thick fog feathered around the hills and valleys as it faded away their definition over a 3 minute exposure.
It wasn’t just the ground that was covered in moisture and cloud – the entire area around the Panamint Range and Telescope Peak was starting to generate its own weather as the air masses passed over the mountains in the distance, almost echoing the scene below.
Looking further north, out over Manly Beacon and its leading line of rocks around Red Cathedral (that we’d soon be hiking to film with a new Phase One lens), the fog’s impact and ability to obscure landmarks was becoming more obvious.
But for someone who’s only ever known this particular scene to be separated by shadow, being able to witness all those layers, textures, fades and flows was quite the moment.
Add in the definite cooling effect that this foggy air was bringing with it, and you have quite the unique experience that only a handful of us were there to share.
Given Manly Beacon’s prominence on the vista at Zabriskie Point, it felt a little rude to not isolate it for at least one long exposure shot – just as the sunlight began hitting the Panamint range, this time with the 138mm Rodenstock lens.
And still to this day, for every point that particular lens loses in portability – wow – it certainly makes up for in terms of image quality and detailed captures when it really matters.
Of course, with such limited time (and relatively long exposures to push the upper clouds into motion), I was more limited than I’d hoped in terms of getting the “extras” like pano shots of the wider basin and valley floor.
But it didn’t really matter – my iPhone captured those perfectly well – and allowed me to concentrate on “being there” just as much as my need to capture the scene.
As if Death Valley isn’t surreal enough on a normal morning – it went and delivered something like that, unexpectedly, on a day that I thought would be a complete write-off.
A few short moments after I packed up my gear, we were swamped once again in that more familiar form of heavy, thick cloud.
And with that – the scene “from above” was gone.
Back to the flooding tunnel of the Inn, back to the season-long cool rain and cloud that I’ve seen on several trips now – and as people began waking up for breakfast, they had no idea what they’d just missed.
Hey – for those non-believers, at least I had the pictures to prove it.
One final note, on that “saturated valley floor”…
Yes, DO be careful when running/jogging/middle-aged-man-speed-walking along the dirt paths after consistent, heavy, rainfall in Death Valley.
Turns out that unique mix of mud, clay, sand and other minerals is particularly slippery and almost impossible to remove when you do fall over.
In fact, I’d say it’s almost as stubborn and rugged as those memory cards of mine…