A Good Night at Badwater

A walk in the dark on the world’s largest, hottest salt flat

The Badwater Basin turnoff near Furnace Creek, CA, in Death Valley National Park. The dry lake bed is eight miles long by five miles wide and at 282 feet below sea level, is the lowest point in North America. (Photo: ©Craig K. Collins)

I arrive to Death Valley’s Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at -282 feet, at near midnight. The sky is ablaze with stars and the Milky Way is rising to the southeast. My car thermometer reads 117F, a stunning temperature this late at night. The high earlier this afternoon at nearby Furnace Creek clocked in at 126F. The daytime temperatures are so extreme that the following day, a motorcyclist will die here from heat exposure. However, without a blistering sun overhead, the night is undoubtedly hot, but relatively comfortable.

I am alone in what looks like an alien landscape and have some trepidation as I begin my walk into what is among the largest salt flats in the world. I am carrying a backpack filled with camera gear and a half gallon of water.

With salt crunching and crackling beneath my feet with every step, I settle into a rhythm as I walk due west, away from the road and any vestige of civilization. It feels like the flip side of walking onto a polar ice cap; these are not places hospitable to humans.

The Milky Way rises south of Badwater Basin with a silhouette of the Black Mountain Range to the left. White crystallized salt reflects both ambient atmospheric light, as well as overhead starlight, enabling the author to walk without a flashlight even on a moonless night. (Photo: ©Craig K. Collins)

I begin my walk with my flashlight on but soon discover that even though there is no moon, I can see fine without artificial light. There is enough ambient light in the atmosphere, combined with overhead starlight, that the salt flat glows like a bright white snowfield.

There is a constant breeze that is hot and in no way refreshing. A steady current of air sweeps across Badwater from the south at around 5 mph. But the salt flat has its own weather system, with heat so intense, even at night, that it acts like a convection oven. At random intervals, full-fledged gusts of up to about 20 mph whip across the flat. This goes on for two or three minutes before the gusts die down and the breeze resumes.

I stop every couple hundred yards to take a swig from one of my two water bottles. But the water, like the breeze, isn’t that refreshing. It has already warmed to the air temperature and is like drinking hot tapwater. But I drink anyway. It is so hot and dry and the breeze so persistent that I can feel the moisture wicking out of me with every breath I take. I imagine that without water, a person wouldn’t last long here. And in the daytime, with the sun glaring off the white salt? Forget it. You’d be cooked in no time.

I’m about a mile out into the salt flat and am thinking about stopping and setting up my tripod and camera. I feel like an astronaut doing a spacewalk and get a sense that this is about as far as the tether to my spaceship should go.

This photo was taken about a mile into the Badwater salt flat, which extends five miles to the base of the Panamint Range, silhouetted in the background. The salt layer at this point was getting slushy. Water from the previous September’s Hurricane Hilary had yet to fully evaporate and formed a large pool beneath Badwater’s salty crust. (Photo: ©Craig K. Collins)

But I’m a little confused because the salt is no longer crunching under my feet. Instead, it for some reason feels and sounds like I’m walking through slushy snow. I take a few more steps and hear a crackling crunch as I break through the crust and find myself up to my ankles in a wet, salty, muddy goo. I’ve forgotten that last September Hurricane Hilary swept unusually far north and deposited two inches of rain — an entire year’s worth of precipitation — in a single day, turning Badwater Basin into a huge lake for the first time in decades. People were kayaking here through much of the fall and winter. Though the lake has evaporated from the surface, a huge pool of water still sits, protected from the sun and heat, just beneath the basin’s salty crust.

I stumble through the primordial muck, fearing for a moment that I might go down, backpack, tripod, camera equipment and all. I think for a minute that this is how it ended for all those mammoths and saber tooth tigers, whose bones they find in the La Brea Tar Pits.

I am able to retreat back to solid ground, my Nikes ruined, but otherwise me not much worse for the wear.

The remains of my Nike running shoes, RIP, after breaking through the crust of the Badwater salt flat and becoming enmeshed in a wet, salty, muddy goo. (Photo: ©Craig K. Collins)

I swig more hot water, set up my camera and begin shooting the sky.

The stars are brilliant and the Milky Way stretches in an arc above the silhouette of the Black Mountains, which form a wall on Badwater’s eastern flank.

After about an hour taking photos, and with my water running low, I feel I’ve begun to overextend my stay.

I pack up and begin trudging, crunchy step by crunchy step, back to my car, back to places more hospitable to human life.

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But it’s a dry heat! The author at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center on July 4, 2024. (Photo taken with Collins’ camera; used by permission.)

Craig K. Collins is a San Diego-based writer, photographer and the author. Check out his latest article, The Curse of Timur, featured in the Spring ’24 issue of Hidden Compass Magazine. You can also view his Hidden Compass: Behind the Byline interview here. Collins is the author of Thunder in the Mountains* (Lyons Press, 2014) and Midair (Lyons Press, 2016), and has a novel due out next year.*