Hiking Death Valley: A Guide to Its Natural Wonders and Mining Past

Explore Death Valley National Park in California with this comprehensive guide to 280 hiking and driving destinations.

With elevations ranging from 282 feet below sea level to 11,049 feet, a world-famous climate, and some of the most spectacular scenery in the North American desert, Death Valley National Park is a year-round hiker’s paradise. Hundreds of miles of trails and cross-country routes lead to countless canyons, springs, and abandoned mines, most of them infrequently visited. Whether you want to stroll on salt flats, hike a lonesome canyon, climb a rugged peak, visit a remote gold mine, or explore the backcountry by car, this comprehensive guidebook offers dozens of destinations suited to everyone’s interests. Illustrated with original topographic maps and more than 100 photographs, this expanded second edition will guide you to Death Valley’s most popular sites and many out-of-the-way places, illustrating the remarkable diversity of its terrain, geology, flora, and fauna. Many of the region’s mines, camps, ghost towns, and other historic sites are also described, including detailed accounts of their colorful past.

• 280 hiking/driving destinations


• Easy day hikes to multiple-day treks


• Eight desert ranges and Death Valley’s fans and floor


• Distance and elevation tables for all routes


• 72 computer-generated topographic maps


• Backcountry road logs and descriptions


• Geology, human history, flora, and fauna


• Tips on desert hiking

Michel Digonnet is a professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University. He has spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has dedicated a good fraction of his spare time to exploring the deserts of California and the Southwest. He has authored three outdoors books on the California Desert. He lives in Palo Alto, CA.