Death Valley National Park now offering a rare opportunity – kayaking

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/death-valley-national-park-kayaking-temporary-lake/index.html

by mooreds • 2 years ago

105 41 2 years ago

edition.cnn.com

clhodapp• 2 years ago

I went to Death Valley in early January. I didn't kayak but I did see the temporary lake. It's absolutely beautiful!

geonic• 2 years ago

When I went to Death Valley the first thing I saw were signs telling you how many people had died from the heat in that year. Then it started raining.

sandworm101• 2 years ago

People can die from heat during rain. Moist air can often make heat stroke worse. Sweating becomes less effective in moist air.

tantalor• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

You're getting slowly poached out there.

whartung• 2 years ago

Seems ironic.

Real ironic was the day the LA (Los Angeles) DWP (Department of Water and Power) declared drought water restrictions on a day we got so much rain we almost had Lake San Fernando Valley. The Sepulveda Dam Recreation area did, indeed, flood. One of those "why do we have all these dams with no water in LA" moments.

As to folks perishing in DV due to heat, this is an extraordinary story worth the time. The "Death Valley Germans" https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...

(What is it with Germans and Death Valley in the summer? It's a Thing. I take it that it doesn't get hot in Germany?)

gumby2• 2 years ago

Last time I was in Death Valley the German car company Opel was filming a car ad for tv. My German wife thought it was hilarious.

devilbunny4• 2 years ago

It doesn't get Death Valley hot (few places do), and Germany has no deserts. Combine that with the German fascination with the Old West and you've got a recipe for disaster. They see the terrain, figure they can handle it because they go hiking in mountains all the time. They can handle the terrain; what they can't handle is the environment.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 2 years ago

Germany has no wilderness. "Nature kills you" is a concept that basically doesn't exist in Germany. As a healthy adult, "getting lost" is a minor annoyance, not genuine danger.

See for yourself: Open Google Maps, zoom in on a random spot, pick a random direction, and tell me how far you have to walk until you'll find a pub or a road that will lead you to one. Repeat as often as you want.

The first spot I got was 60 meters from the nearest forest path, the longest you could walk in a straight line without finding a forest path was 400 meters, and the nearest pub was 500 meters as the crow flies.

The second was much worse: 80 meters, 800 meters, 1.6 km for the same three metrics. Third: 10m, 230m, 1.2km. 4th: 140m, 800m, 600m 5th: 55m, 380m, 2.2km unless you count the Kebap place 1.8km away. You will be hearing the Autobahn the whole time.

The weather is also much less extreme. 41° C (106° F) seems to be the current heat record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_i...), but this is extreme, newsworthy heat, not common. Most of the time in most of Germany you can expect -10 to +35° C (from nighttime in Winter to daytime in Summer).

In summer, basically, t-shirt, shorts with 10 EUR in cash for the beer in a pocket, and sandals with socks will probably be all you need to survive. Everything else (water bottle, a way to navigate) are optional comfort items.

djmips2• 2 years ago

I feel like Germans get killed by bears at a higher rate than other tourists but that's just based on a hunch from headlines.

kibwen• 2 years ago

Informally known as Lake Manly, the fleeting pool is about 6 miles long, 3 miles wide and just 1 foot deep.

That's about 1.421e10 liters of water, which WolframAlpha tells me is 3.5% of the volume of all living humans, and coincidentally the United States has about 4% the world's current population, so this lake has approximately as much volume as the population of the US. (Calculating the deviation in volume between the average American and the average human left as an exercise for the reader.)

gumby2• 2 years ago

I love this calculation because it feels like it is somehow significant but is actually mathematical doggerel. So great, thanks!

throwup238• 2 years ago

How much is that in football-feet? (Football fields covered in water 1 foot deep, like acre-feet except American, fuck yeah!)

dunham• 2 years ago

It's 14.8 billion big gulps. I think that's about 44 big gulps for each resident of the United States.

TheTxT• 2 years ago

You forgot to take the average volume of humans living in different countries into account /s

solardev• 2 years ago

Maybe Bay Area housing would finally get cheaper if we could just convince all the Americans to move into that lake.

AlbertCory• 2 years ago

I went there once in January. It was absolutely perfect weather. No lake that year though.

After a rainy year like this, there are zillions of wildflowers in the spring. It's a very popular destination.

jonstewart• 2 years ago

I went in… 2006?… when the wildflowers were crazy after a wet winter. It’s beautiful when there’s a bloom.

vavooom• 2 years ago

Just visited in January of this year and the Badwater Basin with water in it is stunning. Seeing the sunset there in these conditions is breathtaking and a must do experience if you live within a day's drive of the park!

zoky• 2 years ago

I’ve always wanted to bring some scuba equipment and dive into the one-foot-deep lake when it’s there, just so I could tell everyone that my deepest dive was 282 feet below sea level.

SECProto• 2 years ago

Skip the gear and tell them it was your deepest freedive

sidewndr46• 2 years ago

No it was a saturation dive that took years of preparation

doodlebugging3• 2 years ago

If you go remember to thoroughly clean your kayak and other gear so that you aren't transporting invasive aquatic species to the area. Even though it is usually a desert, you can introduce something that will be hard to detect until the next big rain and hard to remediate.

Scrub it with soap inside and out. Go have fun.

quesera2• 2 years ago

Interesting. What kinds of aquatic species can survive in Death Valley until the next moisture event?

Tardigrades, or maybe those things from Three Body Problem? :)

doodlebugging3• 2 years ago

I think the question is about which non-native invasive plant or organism can survive long periods without water.

I don't think we need to use Death Valley as a test bed.

Normal practice is to wash all your gear before you visit a new body of water so that you don't spread things between them. I said normal as if that is the way boaters operate. Invasive species spreading all over lakes in Texas would suggest that the normal case is quite different here.

Since the responsibility for compliance falls on the boaters, kayakers, canoeists, then we are stuck with whatever they consider normal. That's the problem. A lot of people fail at simple tasks designed to preserve wild places for later generations enjoyment.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 2 years ago

FWIW when I’ve been in states they actually cared about this there were literal kayak inspection stations on the road. I think perhaps I saw this in Montana?

It is a good vector to check and ensure. I’m kind of curious whether it’s an actual common vector or not

doodlebugging3• 2 years ago

It is a big problem and all it takes is one visitor who neglected to clean the boat they had used in an affected body of water before boating in a pristine body of water. Here is only one example. [0]

The problem also occurs for things that grow on land and can be pretty difficult to deal with. [1]

Ecosystem changes due to introduction of non-native species is a global problem. [2]

Texas is like Montana in that we have notices and instructions posted on many popular lakes and on the TPWD (Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept) website. The problem is that many people do not see these notices and they regularly visit multiple lakes during the boating season. I personally think it is a common vector. [0] https://www.nps.gov/subjects/invasive/aquatic-invasive-speci...

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/invasives/index.shtml

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7087615/

tracerbulletx• 2 years ago

I went after the park re-opened to see the lake and it was pretty magical. At the time they were expecting it could dry up pretty quickly. Pretty cool it's lasted this long. The lake history of the great basin is pretty fascinating, during the last Ice Age glacial period much of Nevada and Eastern CA were giant lakes.

lkuty• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/ohSUA

djmips2• 2 years ago

"Footprints in the lakeshore can last for years. People should walk on established pathways,” the release said.

What about paddle marks in a one foot (or less) lake?

Death Valley National Park now offering a rare opportunity – kayaking

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