50/365 Sunrise at Dantes View

On the second day of my Death Valley trip I woke before 3am so decided to make the long drive up to Dante's View.

Dante's view is about 30 miles off the main road during which drive you climb over 5500ft on a steep and windy road.

I reached the top at about 5am with sunrise not happening until 6:30am. For over an hour I was totally alone on the mountain top, my car sat lonely nearby in an empty parking lot.

It was eerily dark on the moonlit peak, quite cold and absolutely silent except for the wind.

To the west 5500ft below was the Badwater salt basin at 270ft below sea level, the lowest point in the United States which glowed white in the moonlight. (see yesterdays blip for a sunset shot on the salt flats). Across the basin were the mountains with telescope peak rising to over 11000 ft.

To the east the hills rolled away into the distance. It was this direction as the sun started to come up that the shot for todays blip comes from.

As the light increased the folds of the hills could be seen layering into the distance with the increasing haze. The clouds on the horizon came alive as the sun peaked below.

A few other people arrived as the sun came up but I couldn't help thinking that they had missed the most interesting time as the dark slowly turned to light standing in the moonlight in total silence.

A truly serene experience.

Part of a series of backblips of my Death Valley trip. I will post a set of links to all of them in each of the blips once I have completed posting them.