A Very Long Hike....Golden Canyon Plus.....29th March

Today it's a planned long hike, hence an early start......3 miles down the road from our campsite to Golden Canyon Trailhead....this photo shows a remaining piece of an old asphalt road through the canyon which has mainly been washed away by flash floods....

The trail is an easy uphill hike to Red Cathedral.....from here the trail gets more challenging but what goes up must at some stage come down !!!...

Yes folks that is the trail at the base of the pinnacle, it has been a steep uphill to here.......

One of my favourite pics....

The people you can see at the top of the ridge are a father and daughter that we met up with several times on the hike....

One of our lasting memories we will take away with us from Death Valley is the  sound of silence....no background noise at all...it's hard to imagine as usually there are insect noises or noises of our modern world but here in Death Valley there is a perfect sound of silence. ....

It's now downhill all the way through Gower Gulch..only another 2.5 miles.......

Gower Gulch starts as a very wide wash and then some 2 miles later the canyon narrows dramatically .....  

The dryfalls at the base of the canyon and a bit of mountaineering !!

Back to the valley......

Ummmm...not down to valley level yet and still another mile back to the car park but we have had a  great hike, lots of fabulous views and enough exercise to have worked off a few glasses of wine and snacks :)  6 miles and the temps today are higher than we have experienced so far, we are again singing "Mad Dogs And Englishmen" (yes we carried plenty of water) home for lunch and a rest !!!

This pic taken from Zabriskie Point......the trail we walked this morning is at the back of the high point......
Well folks once again we must hitch up and move on tomorrow.....we have enjoyed our visit to Death Valley and have many memories to take home and share....