Some more Gabriel Garcia Marquez moments from another Death Valley trip, circa 1972. I’m got an itch to go there right now, but I don’t want to until I can conjure up a replacement for my broken Nikon. And such a trip probably requires different considerations, budgetary and otherwise, than it did back then …
On one Death Valley trip, we traveling photographers stopped in the tiny town of Beatty, Nevada after having checked out nearby ghost towns, including Rhyolite. In Beatty, we came upon a wedding in a bar (of which I so far can find only one or two photos, although I know we shot there for a couple of hours or more), then met and followed “Death Valley Annie” in her ’59 Ford to her combined desert residence/thrift store/junk yard. We also documented various automotive wastage along the way and into the eastern entrance to Death Valley. I also find a roadside photo (no, I did not go inside) of the notorious Cottontail Ranch which suddenly popped up in the middle of the barren desert. And the evening before, we spotted a strategically-placed sheriff’s vehicle with cardboard cutout of an occupant “officer”. A few images here, must be hundreds more somewhere …
Possibly my favorite place in North America, Death Valley became a frequent destination for photographic treks from about 1967 – 1978. One such visit took place over a long Thanksgiving weekend in 1971; some new finds from the negative archives are presented here. From about 1974 on, the Land Rover was the vehicle of choice to traverse terrifying mining trails. But in 1971, it was the VW camper (pictured a couple of times here). (I have also done Death Valley with Ford truck, Porsche and Alfa Romeo at various times.) There is no bad time to go — of course, 120+ degree summers scare off many people, but in some ways that is the best experience. Thanksgiving is ideal in terms of moderate weather and the least tourists (springtime is most popular: decent weather and sometimes surprising blooming flowers). Don’t get me started about Death Valley … it can feel like several distinct planets and a religious experience (think Carlos Castaneda) and more.
Today’s discovery in the ancient and never-published film negative archives documents a 1972 backpack with a couple of friends and Sierra Club members to the Mineral King area of the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range. First day we hiked to around 7000 feet where we camped overnight on the shore, just a few feet from the water in an ice-cold snowmelt-fed lake. (You can see the lake in pics both at shore level and looking down from the overhead peak.) The next day was a stripped-down-for-action scramble up the rocks for another 4000 or so feet to the top of Sawtooth Peak.
This afternoon, yours truly joins friends Kevin and C.J. for a scenic drive to Pendleton via Old Hwy 30 …
Pulling into a parking lot on a 1972 photographic junket to Carmel, Monterey and Big Sur, my eyes were drawn to the inscribed hearse. And a second later, this individual emerged from the passenger side.
C.J., Kevin and I rendezvous at Gangloff Park, then go on to traverse Spring Creek Road to Kamela. And … talk.
These were probably taken somewhere between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. During the few months that my brother and niece shared my Santa Monica Canyon house, I perhaps attained my greatest level of physical fitness before or since with miles and miles of daily riding (though only a fraction of what Dennis undertook). Dennis frequently stopped on these trips to repair his tires; he ran sew-ups while my bike was shod with lower-performing but more durable clinchers.
Memorable from that period were some of bicycle treks — shown here are two photos of an early morning departure for a run from Venice to Laguna Beach (60 miles each way) with Dennis and Mike (aka Rojo) and a couple of scenes from the sojourn from Venice to Solvang (about 125 miles each way), where I experienced the most excruciating relentless uphill stretches ever in the mountains out of Santa Barbara. (Even bicycle racer/mechanic “iron man” Dennis suffered a blister or two.) And the best memory highlighting that summer was a visit of a few weeks by niece Gabrielle, all the way from New York City. (The white-haired gentleman, whose name I forget, was her maternal grandfather.)
Point Vicente is on some of the most rugged and interesting of Los Angeles-area beaches, between the “tourist” beach cities of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo and Los Angeles Harbor/Long Beach. Its lighthouse stood on the tip of the Palos Verdes peninsula overlooking the seafront where these photographs were made in March of 1975. This is a place where metal blends into rock.
