Ubehebe Crater (Death Valley National Park, California)

My friends, Brent and Nick, and I had long heard of the sailing stones of Death Valley. After talking to the rangers on my last visit to the park and learning that winter is the ideal time to adventure in Death Valley, we decided to do some camping and explore some of the wonders the park has to offer.

Our adventure started with Ubehebe Crater, a large volcanic crater at the northern end of the park. Upon walking to the edge of the giant hole in the ground, I was amazed by the scale. I'm just guessing here, but the crater is probably 3/4 of a mile across and 600ft deep. The entire area surrounding the crater is covered with black volcanic ash, which adds a distinct character to this part of the desert.

After gazing in and taking a few pictures, we decided to descend into Hades and check out the bottom of the crater. A fairly well defined path leads down the gravel-covered side of the inner cone. The trip down seemed to take no effort at all and was much more akin to snow-shoeing downhill than anything else I can compare it to. The only challenge was to ensure we didn’t' fall flat on our faces and glide the rest of the way down. After a few dusty minutes, we reached the bottom and found ourselves surrounded by the inner cone. It's massive. The ground here is . . . well . . . a little bizarre. It's a dry red mud that has cracked open into large palm-sized flakes, but then has much smaller flakes on top of each of the large flakes. It really is interesting to look at the crack patterns.

We spent a few minutes exploring the bottom and then decided to make our way back to the rim. Obviously, going up was not nearly as easy as going down. Climbing back up the loose gravel at this grade and for this duration is quite the test of endurance. Along they way, my throat starts to feel as if it has a covering of dust all around it. I cough and hack my way back to the rim, and then once again marvel at nature's beauty in this valley of death.