It’s the Cool Season in Death Valley

Hottest, driest, lowest: Those 3 words are repeated often by rangers to picture Death Valley National Park, which straddles the California and Nevada borders and is the largest nationalist parkland extracurricular of Alaska. At 3.4 cardinal acres, it is known for its blast-furnace summers, erstwhile temperatures person climbed arsenic precocious arsenic 134 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s conscionable the die-hards present then,” said a parkland shopkeeper, bagging my souvenir T-shirt connected a travel to the parkland successful January. “You get exfoliated by blowing sand.”

But little terrible seasons let visitors to admit the quality of Death Valley, from snow-capped peaks that loom implicit brackish flats to winding canyons with polished stone walls and volcanic hills splashed with pastel patches of minerals.

Angling to debar extremes, I chose January from the parkland weather chart, erstwhile chilly 40-degree nights lukewarm to perfect-for-hiking highs of 67. Most visitors similar the warmer months of March and April, erstwhile parkland popularity peaks, with highs ranging from 82 to 90 degrees and lows moving from 55 to 62. Summer is slowest, erstwhile highest temperatures deed 110 degrees and higher.

If speech successful Death Valley often concerns the weather, it’s due to the fact that climactic conditions are important to knowing the place. Though its scenery exposes past elements of alteration done eons of geologic uplift and erosion, it’s inactive shaped by day-to-day conditions. Last year’s flash floods person closed galore roads successful the northbound of the park, though the confederate half, wherever astir of its icons are — including brackish flats, soil dunes and striated badlands — remains open.

On average, less than 2 inches of rainfall autumn present annually, stimulating wildflower blooms successful the little elevations from mid-February to mid-April. Recent rains, including January’s storms, person fans wondering whether this volition beryllium a “superbloom” play of wide flowering.

“We expect this twelvemonth volition astir apt beryllium amended than average,” said Abby Wines, the nationalist affairs serviceman for the park. The past superbloom, she explained, was successful 2016, erstwhile flowers were blooming by Jan. 1, which was not the lawsuit this year. “It’s a uncommon capable lawsuit that determination isn’t an nonstop recipe,” she said.

Van beingness successful the desert

For each its extremes, Death Valley is not middle-of-nowhere distant but, rather, a specified 2 hours’ thrust from Las Vegas.

The eventual successful artificial, Las Vegas is an unusual basal from which to motorboat a foray into nature. But not lone is Sin City connected the borderline of galore parks, including Spirit Mountain successful Nevada and Mojave National Preserve successful California, it’s besides a convenient spot to get a rental car or, successful our case, a camper van.

Among the galore ways to enactment successful Death Valley — including hotels specified arsenic the palm-ringed Inn astatine Death Valley (rooms from $409 successful winter), tents and R.V.s — my adventurous person Anne Marie and I triangulated among the 3 with a tiny camper van from Native Campervans ($102 a time with a three-day minimum and an ample 300 miles included).

The retrofitted Ram ProMaster City — dubbed Sir Vancelot connected the rider doorway — featured a furniture down the beforehand seats that was elevated supra retention bays for food, collapsible chairs, a folding array and luggage. The backmost doors swung unfastened to uncover a kitchenette, with cabinets that pulled retired to make a enactment aboveground with a butane campy stove, a cooler and a h2o jug.

Stocked with bedding, cookware, plates and utensils, vans marque it casual to campy without investing successful each that gear. And dissimilar a ample R.V., we could thrust it regular from our tract astatine Furnace Creek Campground ($22 a night) to research the park.

Driving the van betwixt geologic wonders meant having our home, including our kitchen, with america wherever we went. Though we parked for the nighttime astatine the campsite, with a picnic array and a occurrence ring, we rapidly fell into the wont of backing up to a scenic vista astatine meal and lunch, pulling retired our campy chairs and picnicking from the pantry supplies astatine hand.

Thriving successful ‘hell connected Earth’

Death Valley, it turns out, has a small Las Vegas-style hype successful its history. The ancestral homelands of the Timbisha Shoshone, the country got its sanction from a squad of late-to-the-gold-rush miners, anxious to transverse the Sierra Nevada earlier the wintertime of 1849, who took a purported shortcut south, winding up successful the valley. It took them months to get out, and 1 antheral died. Leaving, the migrants purportedly gave the portion its eerie sanction with their farewell: “Goodbye, Death Valley.”

More than 30 years later, borax, a brackish ubiquitous successful concern and household applications, similar detergents, was discovered successful the valley. This created a brief, five-year mining boom, which was busted successful portion by its find successful much easy accessible places.

Owners of the mining cognition “eventually decided that alternatively of exporting borax, they were going to import tourists,” said Annie Belgam, a parkland ranger offering an interpretive speech astatine Badwater Basin, the lowest constituent successful North America, astatine 282 feet beneath oversea level. “They started to advertise this spot arsenic hellhole connected Earth.”

Indeed, galore of the large landmarks successful the parkland — similar Desolation Canyon and Dantes View — dependable grim. But Ms. Belgam painted a representation of the parkland arsenic a captious ecosystem, location to thriving bighorn sheep; kangaroo rats, which tin past without drinking water; and pupfish, endemic to saline waterways.

The heat, stoked successful a treeless godforsaken wherever rising lukewarm aerial is trapped by surrounding mountains and recirculates similar a convection oven, seemed similar a distant fable to our wool-hatted and thermal-clad crowd.

After the talk, we walked retired to the astir 200-square-mile brackish basin paved successful achromatic polygonal tiles that stretches toward the Panamint Range, the park’s 11,000-foot occidental wall, and dragged our fingers on the vale level to sensation the brackish that remained aft an past water evaporated.

Canyons and dunes

Much of the Park Service proposal for visiting Death Valley relates not conscionable to avoiding the highest temperatures of midday — which is little important successful wintertime — but besides to taking vantage of the airy astatine its warmest tones astatine sunrise and sunset.

On our archetypal morning, we roseate earlier dawn, made a French property carafe of java and drove the camper van 20 miles northbound to Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, a immense dune tract named for the mesquite trees that enactment down heavy roots.

In darkness, it seemed spooky to rotation implicit the dim dunes with conscionable our headlamps to airy the mode successful the trail-less expanse. Soon, aboriginal airy revealed a immense and inviting oversea of soil and swales undulating toward the Grapevine Mountains connected the horizon.

Every clip we managed to acme a dune, pursuing a soil ridge perfectly planed by the upwind and sinking with each step, different beckoned america ahead. Rather than quality footprints, we recovered the trails of nocturnal kit foxes and coyotes and claw prints successful dried clay patches that revealed an past water furniture arsenic sunrise dispersed implicit the sand.

Many established hiking trails travel canyons that transmission heavy into the rocky wilderness. The marble walls of Noonday dolomite and the people cemented stones of Mosaic Canyon flanked the two-mile way done a flood-scoured chasm to a bid of adust falls. On the return, a downhill conception of slick stone created a earthy slide, polished successful portion by the transition of hikers.

Cloudbursts and constellations

The atmospheric stream that brought truthful overmuch rainfall and demolition to overmuch of California successful January reached Death Valley during our stay, producing astir 24 hours of clouds and intermittent rain. We took the flash flood warnings earnestly and scampered retired of canyons astatine the archetypal drops.

But the moisture elicited the exotic char-and-herbal scent of creosote bushes communal successful the park. It besides made the striated rocks much colorful connected scenic drives, including the nine-mile way past Artists Palette, wherever volcanic mineral deposits drench the hills successful violet, pink, yellowish and greenish patches. So arresting were the badlands surrounding the 2.5-mile Twenty Mule Team Canyon thrust that it took america 20 minutes to complete.

We took refuge during the worst of the rainfall successful the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, which was filled with exhibits connected parkland past and ecology. When it stopped, we drove 25 miles northbound to the colony of Stovepipe Wells and saw however easy rainfall changes Death Valley. Puddles pooled connected roadsides, unabsorbed by the compact earth. Water that had surged crossed the blacktop deposited important sandbars.

Though the tempest had passed and the entity was astir cloudless, a ranger advised america against hiking successful the canyons for a fewer hours until each the h2o had made its mode down.

The nation’s driest nationalist parkland is besides a mecca for stargazers. That evening, aft the prima acceptable dramatically to the crowd’s delight astatine Zabriskie Point — a scenic place surrounded by lava-striped badlands — stars and planets appeared wrong a half-hour, led by Mars and Jupiter, followed soon by the constellation Orion and a gauzy Milky Way.

From our chairs astatine the campsite, we gazed up, passing a telephone with a stargazing app connected it backmost and distant to representation the sky, warming ourselves by the campfire successful the 50-degree evening, and talking, of course, astir the weather.

Elaine Glusac writes the Frugal Traveler column. Follow her connected Instagram @eglusac.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our play Travel Dispatch newsletter to person adept tips connected traveling smarter and inspiration for your adjacent vacation. Dreaming up a aboriginal getaway oregon conscionable armchair traveling? Check retired our 52 Places to Go successful 2023.