Today's photo is the view to the North-West from Red Pass on the Titus Canyon Road (though perhaps that should really be the tight-ass canyon road!).
Moving on from my shots of Tucki Mountain, I drove up through Mud Canyon, through Daylight Pass and on in the direction of Beatty. A small brown sign indicated I needed to turn left off the blacktop highway and onto a washboarded dirt road that led to Titus Canyon. After toiling for about 6 miles across continuous washboard, the dirt road started to wind it's way back through the Grapevine Mountains – the name of the mountains hereabouts of the Armagosa Range that form the eastern edge of death valley.
I was driving a 4×4 Nissan XTERRA and was the first on the road that day so my views were free from the dust clouds raised by the vehicles that came after me. I don't think a 4×4 was strictly necessary on that particular day, though the road can suffer from washouts and/or rock falls at any time and you never really know exactly what you'll find around the next bend. Plus, there's always the risk of flash flooding if there's any rain at all, in which case, you'll want to save this trip for another day.
This 5-shot panorama is my favorite sequence from the drive. You can see in the foreground on the left and right the red sandstone that gives Red Pass its name. At 5,250 feet, this is the highest point on the Titus Canyon Road. From here it's downhill all the way, past the ghost town site of Leadfield and then into Titus Canyon proper which is extremely narrow for the last mile before it vomits you out into death valley.
When viewed at 100% you can make out one of the remaining structures in Leadfield and the folded rocks at the entrance to Titus Canyon. This is pretty much center of the frame left-to-right and just below center top-to-bottom. And even at the resolution shown here you can see my shadow.
It was only when I was exploring Leadfield, about an hour later that the first fellow explorers of the day came by. Several didn't even stop at Leadfield so I formed the impression that they didn't actually experience the landscape they were driving through. If you've come all this way, you might as well stop and smell the cactii from time-to-time!
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