A reader sent me an email today after reading my piece on photographing the moving rocks at the Racetrack Playa, saying that he was hoping to visit the Playa later this year and asking for advice. He said he plans to visit in June.

Advice… Do not go to the Racetrack Playa in June. Or during any of the hot season months.

While I have little doubt that it is possible for well-equipped and very experienced desert travelers accompanied by similarly experienced folks to go there at that time of year, there are a number of reasons to warn everyone else against trying it:

• The climate in Death Valley is quite hostile during much of the year. During the summer you can count on temperatures well over 100 degrees F. You shouldn’t be surprised by temperatures over 110 degrees, and much hotter temperatures have been recorded. For this reason, the Death Valley “high season” is more or less November through perhaps the first week of April.
• Add to the above, the following additional challenges of the Racetrack Playa: You’ll drive a 55 mile round trip on an extremely washboarded gravel road; there will likely be few if any other people out there; there is absolutely no water on this road and there are no services whatsoever; there is no cell phone service. In the event of a breakdown you will probably be out there for a long time – perhaps a very long time.
• If all of that wasn’t enough, quite frankly the photography is a whole lot better during the opposite season, when some clouds occasionally come through and add interest to the scene.

More advice… If you go to the Racetrack during a wet season – please stay off the playa! Better yet, save your Racetrack visit for a more appropriate time. Here’s the deal:

• A playa is a very flat place formed when silt-laden water from surrounding hills flows into a low place with no outlet, floods it with muddy silt, and then dries and leaves behind a virtually completely flat surface.
• Playas are often dry for extended periods of time – but on occasion they are wet. Very wet. And muddy.
• Footprints on the playa last for years.
• If you drive miles and miles to have the experience of visiting this vast, untracked place and find it to be wet… stay the hell off the playa so that the everyone who visits the playa for the next X number of years after your visit doesn’t experience a wonderous place marred by your semi-permanent foot prints in the dried surface.

If I know that the playa is flooded or muddy I won’t even go out there.

(keywords: racetrack, playa, death valley, national park, moving rocks, sliding rocks, travel, advice, report, climate, summer, winter, road, washboard, gravel, services, breakdown, photography)