Natural Bridge (Death Valley National Park, California)

For our final hike in the park today, Bill and I decide to check out the Natural Bridge just north of Badwater Basin. The rough gravel road leading to the trail head is traversed by a surprising number of sports cars today, but the jeep is made for this sort of thing and we barely notice the damage caused to the road by the recent rains. 

Again, this trail is very popular. Perhaps, the closure of so much of the park is just concentrating visitors into the open areas. Either way, we join a number of other hikers as we hike up the soft wash into yet another canyon. As with the others we have hiked today, the colors are beautiful shades of gold and red, though here, they seem to be more muted for some reason. 

After only about a third of a mile, we reach the obvious feature for which the hike is named. A large span of sandstone crosses overhead to form a natural bridge over the canyon. Carved over the eons by the rushing rain waters that formed the canyon, the bridge shows signs of cracks throughout. One day it will ceasing being a bridge and collapse onto the wash below. Hopefully, not today. It is a very impressive sight, but wanting a few more miles, Bill and I continue up the wash to see what else there is to explore. 

Climbing up a couple of eroded and nearly dry waterfalls, we finally reach a dead end - a vertical cliff approximately 15 feet high, which probably itself forms a waterfall during a rain shower. Bill, being the adventurous sort he is, wants to try to climb it, but suggest that we turn back and he agrees. Again, the risk just didn't seem worth the reward to me in this case and with all of the other trips I have planned this year, I wasn't willing to risk breaking a leg just to see what was above the cliff. 

We head back to the jeep and head for home. This was short hike of only about a mile, but the Natural Bridge was definitely worth seeing.