Photo tour of a rare rainstorm in Death Valley and a wildflower bloom 3 months later.
Badwater salt flats
Here you’ll stand at the lowest place in North America at -282ft. It’s normally dry with hexagonal mounds like honeycomb, but the season’s rains have washed them away.
Devil’s Golf Course
It’s the Devil’s Golf Course since only the devil could play on such terrain. It’s about 1-2ft hard salt mounds with pointy tips that you can walk on. Just don’t fall! That’d sting!
Ubehebe Crater
Roads washed out on the way
Ubehebe Crater? Can’t even see it in the fog and rain!
Ubehebe crater 3 months later in Spring
Zabriskie Point
Titus Canyon
Devil’s Cornfield
Artist’s Palette
The 5-mile Golden Canyon-Gower Gulch-Zabriskie point loop
Mud wash out from recent storms
Dante’s Peak
View of the salt flat and Devil’s Golf Course from Dante’s Peak
You can even see light reflecting off of the temporary rivers of water!
Wildflower Bloom
3 months later, in the Spring of 2015, we went back to Death Valley for the wildflower bloom after all that rain.
This bloom we saw was “a shadow of its former self” due to a 60mph windstorm that blew through a few days before, but there were still vast fields of flowers.
From far away, you’d almost think there weren’t any flowers, but the floor was just blooming. It was nearly impossible to walk without trampling small flowers. Just get out of the car and start walking.
Brown-eyed Evening Primrose
Brown-eyed Evening Primrose
Desert Gold Poppy
Broad-Leaved Gilia
Beavertail Cactus
Desert Chicory
Desert Chicory
Unknown
Desert Five-Spot
Creosote Bush
Desert Paintbrush
Fremont Phacelia
Notch-Leaf Phacelia
Desert Evening Primrose
The best resource for recent wildflower updates is DesertUSA, which compiles both the official NPS wildflower reports and user-submitted reports. The lower elevation flowers bloom first, followed by mid- and high-elevation flowers.
Locations we saw flowers:
Desert Gold fields between mile markers 23 and 28 on Badwater Road, south of the salt flats.
More Desert Gold fields with Gravel Ghost in the Beatty Cutoff-Daylight Pass Road-190 triangle (this is a beautiful drive itself).
Desert Five Spot and others at the exit to the 20 Mule Team road on 190.
Purple Mat all over Ubehebe Crater.
The most varied flowers along the roadside of the Mesquite Spring Campground entrance, and around Jayhawker Canyon area off of Emigrant Canyon Road.
Desert Paintbrush around mile 16 of Emigrant Canyon Road.