Death Valley National Park - Mesquite Flat Dunes

Since my company shuts down between Xmas and New Year, we have been taking advantage of this time by traveling. This year we wanted to be back for Xmas, so we took a short 5 day trip to Death Valley and Vegas.

We booked 2 nights at the Furnace Creek Ranch, which was closer to more of the sights I wanted to see.

 




The first spot we checked out in Death Valley were the Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes which were about 20 minutes from Furnace Creek. The first day was really just to scope out locations for sunrise the next day.



The highest dune is about a mile out wading through the sand, and looks a lot closer than it really is. We walked straight out from the parking lot and headed for the highest peak.

Jaime's pic of me climbing up the dunes
View from the peak

The next morning I woke up at about 5am and headed for the dunes. Sunrise wasn't until 6:45am but I had to drive out there and hike to the dunes. I wasn't able to make it out there in time for a good sunrise but got there in time for the sun breaking through the mountains for the first light on the dunes.


Dried up mud flats
First light on the dunes

I chose this location as a sunrise spot because its the best time for the least amount of footprints in the dunes, and sometimes the wind blows away the ones from the previous day. Unfortunately, there was no wind the night before and all the tracks were still there. I had to hike in a bit further to get to some untrampled dunes. With the sun rising over the mountains, the compositions are endless as the shadows change.

It's really hard to get a sense of how big these dunes are, so I took a few with a human element for scale.


Two hikers at the peak








Another photographer shooting the dunes, and taking pics of me as well


Animal tracks and a hiker at the peak in the background


Self-shadow of me on a dune spine

There was really only one other photographer out there in the am, which was nice. I was able to capture a lot of untrampled dunes without too many people running around, but still able to show the scale of how big they are.


Tracks as I was leaving the dunes

The next spot I wanted to check out for both sunrise and sunset was Zabriskie point, which will be updated in another post.

Brandon Yoshizawa
B.A.Y | photography
Landscape and Wildlife photography
www.bay-photography.com