Death Valley, just like Alaska, boasts many of the ‘ests’ — lowest, driest, hottest

Death Valley National Park holds the record for the hottest naturally occurring air temperature recorded on the surface of the Earth: 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.

I read this before going there. It just didn't quite register somehow. After all, it's hard to imagine that any place is warm coming from Alaska, and it was cold on our way in.

My friend and I drove a rental car in the tiny triangle of the park located in Nevada (almost all of Death Valley is in California). Along the way we stopped to gawk at the ghost town of Rhyolite, the husks of mining structures and what was once an old, grand casino slowly bleached and eroded by the elements. The wind pushed clouds quickly across the sky, scouring the old buildings and our legs.

Back in the warmth of the car and heading west, it became clear there was just one road in from this direction. Highway 374 into the park was a straight shot for miles into the distance, fading from view only when it met the Amargosa Range ahead of us. To either side of us, wide open nothingness.

I have to defend nothingness. It didn't look dead or valueless. It was incredible to see so much open space cut through only by one road. The road dipped and rose, and the feeling of vastness was both sobering and exciting.

Here's what I didn't predict, but if I'd bothered to look at a topographical map (or even thought about it for longer than a minute) I would have known — Death Valley itself is hidden because it is so low, framed on all sides by mountains. The park is home to the lowest point in North America — Badwater Basin, which is 282 feet below sea level.

We wound through the Amargosa mountains as we made our way in, and eventually there was a lookout over the expansive valley below showing us exactly how much elevation we'd lose as we crept downward. Beatty, Nevada, where we'd slept the night before, is at elevation 3,307 feet. Furnace Creek, the main hub of Death Valley National Park including the campground we stayed at, is 190 feet.

We gazed outward at an enormous expanse of flats in every direction, framed only by mountains on the other side, even one with snow on top — Telescope Peak (11,043 feet, the highest point in the park). I eventually learned that those mountains ringing the park cause the high temperatures by continuously forcing hot air down to bake and bake again on the wide, hot surface of the desert floor.

We drove toward that desert floor.

It was sobering. The temperature kept ticking up — 75, 76, oh look, it's 80 degrees — as the elevation dropped. We rolled our windows down and turned the music up. The landscape was massive. With the sun beaming down and shimmering salty bands of white across the endless flats rolling out in the center of the valley, I felt suddenly that the ring of mountains was holding us in. I felt tiny and somewhat trapped in an enormous, arid landscape that could very well kill me with its dryness. But I was equally intrigued, if also really glad we had giant jugs of water in the backseat.

None of this uneasiness stopped us from blasting Rhianna all the way to the Furnace Creek Visitors Center. A kind and patient park employee told us about some hikes and sights in the area and advised us that the temperature could crawl to 100 by the end of the afternoon. I also learned that at 3.1 million acres, Death Valley is the largest national park outside of Alaska.

We set out to explore it. We filled our water jugs, hosed ourselves down with sunscreen, put our shades on and headed to the first trailhead.

Heat and sun. As an Alaskan, these are welcome but extreme. We started our hike midday and quickly realized why people start in the desert early. The heat made my heart beat faster even for a little exertion. We stopped every half mile for water and, where we could find it, shade.

For a national park, it felt nearly deserted. We stuffed our tank tops into our sports bras to expose our equally bright white bellies to the sun. The breeze on my stomach was the best part.

That is, if you don't count walking up canyons. There are no developed trails in Death Valley, just routes that are so popular the park service manages and maps them to some degree. I'd never experienced walking through a narrow canyon before, the feeling of being in a natural, open-air corridor that wound around toward a place I could only vaguely see. From above, the tops of the canyons looked like waves, braided with stripes of color. Nature, with all of her repeating patterns, looked to me like the design in foamy lattes.

It hit 101 degrees by the end of the day. We insisted on sleeping in the tent without the fly, even though the wind picked up when the sun went down. It felt so good to have warm air on my skin even in the night and to camp somewhere where rain isn't a given. When we went to sleep there were some high clouds across the sky, but in the middle of the night we woke up to a totally clear, moonless sky thick with stars.

In the morning I woke up to rivulets of sand on my inflated mattress pad, carried in by the wind in the night. My hair was so course and gritty it felt like it belonged to a horse.

I didn't care. There's something about the feeling of dirtbaggery in the desert, with its extreme dryness, that is compelling. Maybe because it pairs so well with a tan, or that beer tastes so incredibly good at the end of the day.

Death Valley, just like Alaska, boasts many of the "ests" — the lowest, driest, hottest. Maybe that's why I loved it so much, even as it scared me.

Alli Harvey lives in Palmer and plays in Southcentral Alaska.