Tag Archives: death valley

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Ghost Towns, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Skidoo Mill

May 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The abandoned Skidoo Mill, high in the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley National Park

I have been out to the site of the old ghost town of Skidoo a few times. Oddly perhaps, snow has played a part in more than half of my visits—not what you might expect for a desert region like Death Valley. The first time I went there I really did not know much about the place at all, and I drove the nine mile gravel road more or less on a whim, arriving at the broad valley where the main town was, finding little there, poking around a bit, and leaving, a bit disappointed. (I did have a chance to investigate some other historical sites in the area on the same trip, so in the end I didn’t feel cheated.) More recently I visited last winter, during a very cold trip to the park when I encountered sub-freezing temperature down in Death Valley itself and colder temperature well down into the teens up here. Parts of the road were covered by shallow snow, and it was a quiet and lonely experience to be out there alone in the snow. This time I poked around a bit more, exploring some side trails and nearby ridges, until I decided that it was best not to push too far with the snow on the ground.

This past April we were there again, on a day full of interesting experiences and adventures. I often spend at least a day up in the Panamint Range when I visit the park, and I always find new and interesting things, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a range of conditions and subjects in a single day before. We started before dawn and had a brief moment of sunrise light before the clouds of an incoming storm turned out the lights. Very soon we began to see snow flurries along the Panamint ridge and other summits, and soon after visiting one historic site it began to snow in earnest. We headed toward a higher location and finally had to back down as the snow continued to fall. Surprisingly, in these cold conditions and snow we found… abundant wildflowers! We stopped several times to photograph the unexpected display, and then decided to make the side trip to Skidoo as the storm passed and the sun came out. Once there we pushed out past the town site to the location of the old mill, where ore from the mines was processed. The mill, long abandoned and deteriorating now, is an astonishing thing. Its location is unexpected and stunning. It sits right below the crest of a steep ridge and the structure stretches down toward a deep valley below—and the entire site overlooks a vast and arid desert landscape, a bit of which is visible in this photograph. Even more amazing, this mill was powered by water, not at all what you would expect in such a dry and desolate place. But the miners ran a pipeline over 20 miles from a spring elsewhere in the high Panamints to get water to supply power and for the domestic use of the town’s residents.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Panamint Mountains, Spring

May 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Cloud shadows pass across valleys of spring-green high desert plants in the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley National Park

I like to think of this photograph as one that may offer a more truthful presentation of the character of Death Valley. As photographers, almost all of us to looking for the extraordinary—momentary instances of astonishing light, brilliant color towering clouds, dramatic light, and more. And, of course, there is nothing remotely wrong with that. It is these things that draw us to these places and which drive our search once we get there. We will often put up with, sometimes patiently and sometimes not, hours or days of what some call “blah” light in order to be able to photograph brief instance of something atypically powerful. But we must be aware that what we find and show in this brief slices of time is often special precisely because it is unusual.

A few years back I started thinking more about my relationship with the landscape of Death Valley and the surrounding terrain. I had been focusing on the extraordinary—and I still do—and on the way to such places I often passed through other areas, sometimes without taking the time to think about what I was seeing in those moments. I think that it was partially out of frustration that I arrived at the idea of trying to see these subjects more clearly and try to figure out how to photograph them. After all, I knew—at least once I stopped to think about it—that my love of this places was not limited to just the unusual and extraordinary moments, but that it also included midday quiet in the heat and subtle colors of sage country, a series of simple overlapping ridges, a bit of rock. And once I recognized this I started to think that these things, and not just sunrises and sunsets and impressive formations and unusual clouds, might make worthy subjects if I slowed down and tried to understand them. And this is one of those photographs. There is no single, impressive subject in this frame. Instead we have the almost uniform pale green of the arid mountain plants on an early spring day after rain, when the plants produce a subtle but surprising green coloration that varies as the land alternates between gullies and the tops of low hills and clouds from a cleaning storm move across the landscape.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Golden Evening Primrose

May 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden Evening Primrose blossoms, Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park

Once we figured out that this was turning out to be a rather good wildflower year in Death Valley—rather than the expected complete bust—we began to see wildflowers everywhere. Although there were not too many at the lowest elevations in the most arid and desolate parts of the valley itself, up in the surrounding desert mountains there were a lot of flowers, and in some places the display was downright abundant, with the colorful patches on hillsides visible from a good distance away.

It helped that on what was probably our best wildflower photography day there was a winter storm that not only brought some rain and a bit of snow to the higher elevations but, more importantly, brought clouds and the soft light conducive to flower photography. As we would walk or drive along we might spot a bit of color and get out to look around. Invariably, as soon as we started photographing that color that we first spotted we would look more closely and find more and more examples and more and more kinds of flowers. What seemed like it might be a quick “stop to photograph the yellow flowers,” inevitably turned into a half hour or an hour exploration of a world of small and colorful desert flowers.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Mallow Buds

May 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Desert mallow buds begin to open, Death Valley National Park

Much to our surprise, in this third of three straight California drought years, we found an abundance of wildflowers during our early April visit to Death Valley National Park this year. Throughout the state, things are not on their normal yearly cycles. Because of the very serious drought, many plants did not come up at all during the usual winter time frame, and now that spring is here we see many others blooming much earlier than usual. We had assumed, along with a lot of other people, that the widespread drought was going to make this a very poor year for desert wildflowers.

We were wrong. Even outside the park on the drive there we started to see a lot of flowers in the arid portions of Southern California and to the east of the southern end of the Sierra Nevada. Many desert plants are very opportunistic, bursting forth when a bit of rain falls at the right time, and rain had recently fallen out here. Oddly enough, as I photographed these opening desert mallow buds here in the desert mountains of the park… it was very cold and starting to snow!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: death valley

Skidoo Mill

Golden Evening Primrose

Desert Mallow Buds

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.