Desert Daze - A Southwest Adventure (XXIV)

Part Twenty-Four: Willow Creek Canyon Falls and the Bighorn Sheep

(First time reading this 'Desert Daze' story? Scroll down to 'Older Posts' to start with Part One)

Or rather, his skeleton, but I’ll get to that…

For the second waterfall hike of the day, I tackle Willow Creek Canyon. The first section of the route is pure drudgery; it’s more than a mile across a vast, ankle-twisting alluvial fan before even reaching the canyon mouth. (An alluvial fan is an outspread, gently sloping mass of alluvium [rocks and sand] deposited by a stream, especially in an arid or semiarid region where a stream issues from a narrow canyon onto a plain or valley floor. Viewed from above, it has the shape of an open fan, the apex being at the valley mouth.) There is not even a hint of water here, just rocks, sand and more rocks and sand.

When I finally do reach the mouth of the canyon and enter it, there is still no sign of water. I hope the waterfalls are running since that is the whole point of this hike. After about another three-quarters of a mile of trudging through shifting sand and loose rock, the canyon abruptly narrows into not much more than a deep crack in the mountain wall. Not long after that, water magically appears in the form of a pretty, little gurgling stream, the music of which reverberates pleasantly off the canyon walls. I realize now that the water was with me all along but deep down in the sand whereas here there is only solid rock, nowhere for it to hide.

With the discovery of water, my enthusiasm is now rekindled and I practically sprint up the narrow defile until I reach my goal – the waterfall.

There it is and it’s a nice one, spilling and splashing down a fifty foot wall. I’ve read that there is a way up and around the waterfall, with more waterfalls upstream but this is the end of the hike for me, I’ve done enough today and I’m not about to attack a fifty foot wall.

I’ve enjoyed two waterfalls in one day in otherwise bone-dry Death Valley, who would’ve thought? I turn to go back, but as I turn, something in my peripheral vision causes me to look right. There, at the base of the wall is a skeleton! It’s of a bighorn sheep! I guess even these normally surefooted animals slip once in a while. Before today, I hadn’t even realized that bighorn sheep inhabited Death Valley, I thought they only lived in much colder climes - but here lying at my feet was irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

With my hiking and solitude urges satisfied for the day, I leave the waterfall and skeleton behind and trudge back through all that sand and rock to where I started. At least this way is downhill. Finally, I spy Hotel Truck waiting patiently in the distance for the next adventure. When I reach ‘er, I climb in, start ‘er up, and get back on the road pointing ‘er west towards my next destination: the deepest mountain valley in the lower 48.

Next: Mountains to the Left of Me, Mountains to the Right, Here I Am, Stuck in the Valley - Great View!