Death Valley National Park is a huge landscape, in more ways that one. The park is huge. It is the largest park in the contiguous states. (Alaska, where everything is on a larger scale, has four larger parks.) Within the park we often are able to view huge distances — in fact, Death Valley’s visual scale reminds me of places I’ve seen in Alaska. Here we look down Rainbow Canyon and across the entire Panamint Valley (one valley west of Death Valley itself) toward more desert mountains.
The spot where I made this photograph is notable for several reasons. It is one of the most westerly areas of the park. It overlooks the immense Panamint Valley. (If you have ever looked toward Telescope Peak from Death Valley, this is what is beyond that peak.) Rainbow Canyon is a wild location that doesn’t get a lot of visits even though you can look down Into it and see colorful rock formations. Something else happens here, and that “something else” gives that canyon its other, informal name. (that’s all I’m going to say in this post, but a future post may fill in some gaps.)
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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
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