Today we headed up from the hot springs through Steele Canyon. We passed a few travelers on the way that warned us about a pinch point we might have trouble getting through, but it was much further up the road. It was actually something others
had already warned us about when we asked about the canyon, but these travelers, with fresher eyes and memories seemed more wary about its possible difficulty for our rig to get through. We stopped for lunch at a nice little view point that let you see down into Saline Valley and hiked around a bit. It was such a nice little plateau that another traveler on a motorcycle stopped to have lunch too. Some jeeps also came through thinking we were further up the trail when really we were off to the side. The caravan turned about and headed on their way down the right path. It was turning into a rather long driving day. The road wasn’t too bad, but enough so that we were going pretty slow. We finally started to get down into some tighter canyons with beautiful rock walls and sure enough we reached the pinch point. It was actually a series of 3 points that were all narrow and all had drop offs. Prior travelers had already built up rocks to help them get through. We debated whether or not to proceed, but ultimately decided to go for it as this was pretty much the end of the canyon after a long day of driving to get to this point and the way back would have been long. Zack Attack did some measuring and we did some rock building and it probably took us a good hour to get through the 3 points. We scraped the back end just a bit, but the Grolar Bear came through mostly fine. Just past this the canyon opened up and you got a beautiful view of the Eureka Sand Dunes in the distance. Apparently at 700 and some feet tall these are both the highest in Death Valley and the highest in California,. The sun was coming down and there is some primitive camping right by the dunes – nicely spread out spots denoted only by remnants of camp fire rings and some rocks.
We raced into camp at an exhilarating speed along the sandy roads that led up to the dunes (getting stuck in sand was not something we cared to chance at this point.) At one point Zack Attack rolled up my window moments before the Grolar Bear blew through a blast of sand that went all over the window on my side. There were a few other campers in the area, but so far apart you could barely see them, let alone hear them. The sand mountain was so different than the terrain we’d been traveling through all day that it was like we’d arrived on another planet. The moon was out and full over the striated mountain behind us and the sun setting behind the dunes painted the sky pale colors while a light wind refreshed us.
