Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

Winter is the best time IMHO. The key though is to avoid the holidays that litter the season: President's Day is particularly bad for some reason in my experience, but so are Thanksgiving, Christmas/New Years and to some extent MLK. I've had good luck right after Thanksgiving and after President's Day weekend in like late February before the spring breaks start up. The nice part about the park is the solitude and people tend to concentrate in a handful of places in the park so really mid-week away from a holiday can be the difference between peace and quiet v. Disneyland.

 

Super helpful, thanks. We'll see how far we get in early January and then do the rest on foot. I've gone up in the snow before and it's not too bad if you know the route and the snow isn't too too deep (my guess is a fair amount will be melted by second week in January).

 

Well good thing this "long assed thread" exists.
TRD OR or sport?
Really depends on what you want to see. If it's your first trip to DVNP I'd suggest doing what I call Death Valley proper, meaning the main tourist sites around Furnace Creek and check the DVNP website for rules and regs. Get some maps too.
What off-road driving experience do you have?
Lots of variables.

 

The snow/ice lasts up there much longer than mid-January especially if the storms continue.

 

I second Eric's @ETAV8R suggestion of hitting some of the more mainline sites the first time you visit. From there, you can venture into some of the "secondary-but-still-populated" places like Racetrack Valley and Saratoga Springs. As you learn your way around - and assuming you get comfortable - start wandering further and further from civilization. The best stuff - as usual - will take some doing (and hiking).

I've spent quite a few nights in the park by now. Not as many as some of the veterans here, but there are still tons of ideas in my trip reports, here:

https://adventuretaco.com/index/death-valley/

 

I am aware.

 

Merry Christmas everyone. This surely isn't as great a present as was received by @DVexile and his wife (super cool Ken, congrats!!!), but hopefully as your dinner settles and you find yourself lazing around looking for something to read, you might enjoy the final part of our Pushing into the Panamints trip. And, I'd like to thank everyone on this thread for another wonderful year of Death Valley info; it (and the similarly attended Owens Valley thread) is one of my favorite threads on the forum, and I always look forward to notifications of new content!

Highest Peak in the Park - Panamints 3​

...And with that, we reached the summit! The views - as one can imagine - were beautiful. Stretching for a hundred miles in every direction we could see well into Nevada to the east and across Panamint and Owens Valley to the Sierras to the west. For a while, we just soaked it all in....

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Highest Peak in the Park - Panamints 3



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Thanks Dan. Merry Christmas!

 

I’ll give a slightly different answer than some others. I’d been to DV a few times before I went extensively off pavement and I still haven’t done nearly as much as others here. But if you stick to the normal (paved) tourist stuff you’re missing out on one of the things that makes DV unique among California National Parks, the remote vehicle exploring. Even if it’s “easy” like Eureka Dunes (from the north, not Steel Pass), Titus Canyon, or The Racetrack, check it out. Assuming you have some off-road and “survival” experience. Just make sure you’re prepared with overnight gear in case of trouble, water water water, and check current and forecast conditions and have maps. And winter is good but expect snow or at least cold temps above 4000’.

 

Sounds good. I would definitely be fully prepared for total self sufficiency and getting off the paved tourism roads would be my desire. Going solo would have me holding out on the hard core stuff until I get a chance to connect with a few others for a trip.

Thanks for the encouragement!

One more thing...regarding communications.

Are you guys running with CB's, GMRS, or HAM....or ALL the above?

I'm in the mode of planning my comm layout. I have the venerable Baofeng handheld but looking to do some hard mount systems. Thinking CB for the roads well traveled but thinking maybe I should install a GMRS as well. It sounds like GMRS is on the rise over CB and maybe even HAM on the mobile forefront. I'm 3 minutes away from Rugged Radio's new facility and was thinking of going in to chat with them but I'd really like to know what the skinny is with guys in the field.

 

In the context of this thread, the Death Valley region, all three are essentially useless for solo travel as there are no consistently accessible repeaters for any of them in the region and you are often in canyons and valleys that result in rather short line of sight. There are a few VHF HAM repeaters in the surrounding regions which you can access from some parts of the park, but the likelihood of anyone monitoring them is low. You shouldn't rely on any of those for emergency communications in the park and your cellphone is more likely to be useful in an emergency than any of those radio bands. (While cell coverage is very poor in much of the park it is still more useful than CB, GMRS, or HAM).

For group travel, where you'd use the comms just for local traffic between vehicles, there isn't much difference in Death Valley from anywhere else other than that it is very empty and so bands that might normally be busy are fairly quiet in the park. So you are less likely to get interference from another group. HAM would require everyone in the group to be licensed which isn't typical. CB doesn't really have space efficient handhelds available and requires longer antennas. FRS/GMRS has plenty of cheap handhelds and so is the easiest to provide to other members of a group who don't have permanently mounted radios in their rigs.

Personally I rarely travel in a group so I've never bothered to install a permanent mobile radio. I carry a few FRS/GMRS handhelds to use in the rare times I'm traveling with another vehicle. For emergency communications I have satellite options instead.

Outside Death Valley there are probably a lot of pros and cons between the three bands depending on where you use them and who you typically travel with.

 

My recommendation on communications is ALWAYS to go with whatever the people you travel with use, first. No matter what the "most common" or "best" thing is (which everyone has their own opinion on), it does you no good to have that thing if none of the guys you travel with have the same type of radio.

For that reason, I have a CB radio - all the guys I started going out with (and still do) have CB, so it's our lowest common denominator. If they had GMRS, I'd have that instead. You get the picture.

Now, if you're a solo traveler (only or as well), the situation is a bit different. In my opinion, in that case you need to look at it from the perspective of "what will give me the greatest chance of communicating the longest distance if I'm in trouble?" From that perspective, a satellite tracking device is the clear winner. Hands down. If you're doing solo exploring and you aren't 100% comfortable that you can get yourself out of the harriest situations, do your loved ones a favor and get a Garmin inReach Mini. It's not cheap, and there's a monthly subscription, but in an emergency, it is the closest thing to a sure bet on getting a signal out. Ken @DVexile has written much on these devices, and it's worth reading his thoughts. (here) (here) (and do some searches on the site for "garmin" and "inreach" and posted by DVExile)

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Beyond satellite, for distance, ham is the clear winner - if you know how to use your radio. While a mobile unit will transmit at 50W, you have to know how to change frequencies, use offsets, repeaters, etc. - these things are not an easy task on most radios, and the majority of folks have no idea how to perform these operations. If you can, there are many more people out there listening on HAM than there are on other frequency bands. Still, it is not - by a long stretch - a guarantee that you'll get someone, especially if you're in a canyon or away from your truck, etc.

One other benefit of Ham is that it also allows you to use APRS - if you get a radio that supports it natively (or a supplemental TNC and the associated software)***. This allows you to "continually" broadcast your location to any receivers (individuals or repeaters) and have that information then spread more broadly, including to the internet, allowing folks you left at home track your general location. Of course, it does require that there be repeaters within range, which is usually but not always a safe assumption. Parts of Death Valley have reasonable repeater coverage; others have none at all. You can see what was recorded on the internet (red dots, connected) vs. my actual general route (blue) on my last trip to the park, below. Note that it was a several day trip, and there were at least 3 days where no red dots were recorded.

*** I would be remiss to not mention that an InReach can do this as well, with the appropriate priced plan, and would likely give a much more representative track, at a cost.

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^ pretty much makes me decide that I probably should get an InReach.. My APRS beacons are pretty much spotty or non existent where I would most likely need a signal in an emergency..

 

I’ll just add to @turbodb’s excellent post that for emergency satellite comms if you want to avoid a subscription and just have the ability for rescue in a true life threatening emergency there are also PLBs. Similar size and cost as an InReach Mini but no subscription. Details in the links he already provided.

 

Hey everyone, happy new year! Early this morning I got back from a very fitting end to my 2021, in Death Valley of course, and managing to end the year's adventure spree much the same way as it had started last January. By which I mean: stumbling over Mengel pass in near-darkness in a delusional pursuit of enjoying every last minute of daylight I can spend in this remarkable place:

This time, I was headed in the other direction--out the way we came such a short time ago. Unfortunately my copilot had to work this week, and although that sucked, I was glad to have this day on my own to reflect upon the year in such epic solitude.



The trip wasn't all backtracking though, I managed to hit a number of new places as well.

















His name was Steven.



I was a bit worried there would be snow at the pass... the snow level had actually come pretty low!





But luckily there was no snow on the pass and I didn't have any trouble... that is, until I hit mud in Panamint Valley. What a mess!

 

...I'm one lucky dude. Having just gotten back from two trips to Death Valley - (Lowest Peak in the Park) (Highest Peak in the Park) - over a three week period, the beginning of December saw me headed back for my third trip in a month!

But, frequency wasn't the only reason I'm excited. Every year, a few buddies get together for an annual outing - usually in early fall - to explore and hang out. For me, it all started when I tagged along on my first major trip - The De-Tour - and I've been hooked ever since. This year, truck problems and smoky conditions cancelled our trip - a huge bummer - until now!... Day 1 of a week long trip took us to Rhyolite, Titus Canyon, Ubehebe Crater, Teakettle Junction, and into Hidden Valley for camp.

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Welcome to Death Valley, Boys - Back for More #1​

 

New rims look juicy ! Bling bling

 

These are some great photos. Love the snow behind Geologists Cabin.

 

Will be in Lone Pine this month and wanted to cut across DV to Beatty, NV afterwards, wondering if anyone has been through DV and know if the road past Scotty's Castle heading up to the 267 is open yet? Online I still see the same closure notices from years prior but for whatever reason Apple Maps says its open now, was hoping someone had first hand experience.

 

Bonnie Claire Road (connects Scotty’s Castle to NV-267) is still closed.

Being a road in the NP the NP website hosts the most up to date information on road conditions in the park:

https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/conditions.htm

You can still get to Beatty via Daylight Pass and the 374 which is a fairly direct route.