Desert Storms and Superblooms: Death Valley With Steve Hall

What are the fascinating — and also dangerous — aspects of Death Valley National Park? How does visiting a stark desert landscape give us perspective about our place in the world? Steve Hall is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park. * What’s special about Death Valley National Park? * What are some of the iconic places to visit? * The dangers of Death Valley * Solo adventures and challenges * Dark skies and star gazing * Legends and history * Conservation and visitor etiquette You can find Steve’s hiking videos of Death Valley and other places at YouTube.com/stevehallDV. The Death Valley National Park website has lots more info. You can find pictures and notes, as well as book recommendations on Death Valley here. You can find Death Valley, A Thriller, by J.F. Penn, here. Transcript of the interview Jo: Hello travelers. I’m thriller author, J.F. Penn, and today I’m here with Steve Hall. Hi Steve. Steve: Hi Jo. It’s great to be talking to you today. Jo: Yes, just a little introduction. Steve is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker and a seasoned adventure hiker renowned for his extensive explorations of Death Valley National Park, which we’re talking about today. Let’s start with the basics. Where is Death Valley in the world and what drew you to it initially? Steve: Great questions. You know, it’s great to be talking with you about Death Valley National Park—of course, my favorite national park to visit. Death Valley is part of the Northern Mojave Desert, and it’s located right along the California–Nevada border. It’s kind of situated in between Las Vegas to the east and the Sierra Nevada mountains off to the west. It is the largest national park in the lower 48 states. It actually has the great size of 3.4 million million acres, and it’s 140 miles in length, going from the bottom of the park all the way up to the top in the north. So it’s quite expansive. Well, it kind of started for me back in 1997 when I was with a group of friends on the way to the Grand Canyon. As we finished up our trip there, we had a couple of extra days on our way home. So I noticed on a map all these kind of scary-sounding names within Death Valley—locations such as the Devil’s Golf Course, the Devil’s Cornfield, the Funeral Mountains, Badwater—kind of all scary, foreboding-sounding places. I told my friends, “Why don’t we stop there? We have a little extra time and see what Death Valley is all about.” And that’s what we did. We drove through the park and actually had a kind of scary experience right when we first crossed the park boundaries. My very first memory of crossing into the park was seeing an injured motorcyclist on the dirt just off the road. I guess he had taken a turn too fast or something, but he flew off his bike and was injured, and paramedics were attending to him. So that was my introduction to the park—seeing somebody badly injured. But on that first trip, I visited some of the famous tourist destinations such as Badwater, Artist Palette, Zabriskie Point, and Devil’s Golf Course. So that kind of gave me a little taster or teaser of the park. Those are the same kinds of destinations that first-time park visitors are sent to. Let’s just get a bit into what it looks like because you mentioned a few things there, like the Devil’s Golf Course. I went to Badwater.