The South is the most visited section of Death Valley, incuding Artist’s Palette, Badwater, Dante’s View, Devil’s Golf Course and Zabriskie Point.

Badwater Basin

At 282 feet below sea level, Badwater Basin is both the lowest and driest point in North America, and its record-setting temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit makes it the hottest place on Earth. The massive salt flat covers nearly 200 square miles of Death Valley National Park, and lies more than two miles below the 11,331-foot Telescope Peak that looms above it.

Corkscrew Canyon

Corkscrew Canyon is a shallow, branched drainage through undulating, yellowish badlands. One fork forms a pretty section of narrows, while another contains an old mine site.

Dantes View

Dante’s View is a spectacular mountain overlook on the west side of Death Valley. A short path leads to the summit of Dante’s Peak a little way north.

Golden Canyon/Gower Gulch

South of Furnace Creek, road 190 passes the Hwy 178 junction then climbs into the Grapevine Mountains towards the atmospheric town of Death Valley Junction. Two miles south along 178, Golden Canyon is a short gorge that cuts into brightly colored sandstone rocks in many glowing shades of orange, gold and red, with the ever-present deep blue sky above making the hues seem especially sharp and intense.

A paved road once ran the whole length but this has long been disused and most sections have eroded away. Now, travel on foot is the only option, and the hike is one of the most popular in the national park; combined with a return via adjacent Gower Gulch, the journey is 4.3 miles round trip. Trail guides describing numbered points of interest are available at the nearby carpark.

Natural Bridge Canyon

Of the many easily explored side canyons in the cliffs on the east side of Death Valley, one of the few with an official trailhead is Natural Bridge Canyon, reached by a spur road off CA 178, 4 miles south of the start of the Artist’s Drive scenic loop. A short walk up the stony streambed leads to a large natural bridge, one of several such features in the national park – several more are found after a rather longer (3 mile) walk up Little Bridge Canyon, the next major drainage south of Grotto Canyon near Stovepipe Wells.

Slit Canyon

Slit Canyon (an unofficial name) is one of several narrow ravines draining the southwest edge of the Funeral Mountains, which border the north side of Highway 190 between Death Valley Junction and Furnace Creek.

The hills are generally several miles from the road, separated by wide, sloping, alluvial plains, but Slit Canyon and vicinity is reachable via the gravel track to Hole-in-the-Wall, a small gap in a thin, intermediate ridge that parallels the mountain range.

The track is accessible to all vehicles as far as the gap, then is for 4WD only, continuing 5 miles to a colorful basin named Red Amphitheater. Both areas are relatively popular for free primitive camping (permissible once 2 miles from Highway 190); the nearby narrow canyons though are less well-known.

Death Valley is one of very few NPS units where such camping is allowed, without need for a permit.

Slit Canyon emerges from the steep sided mountain foothills just over a mile north of Hole-in-the-Wall, and upstream it soon enters an enchanting series of narrow passageways, interspersed by chokestones and dryfalls, some climbable, others passed by scrambling up and around.

Easy travel is stopped after less than half a mile by a higher fall, but a longer bypass leads to other short, narrow channels, in between generally wider sections.

The surrounding limestone (dolomite) rocks are colored light shades of grey and brown, interspersed with some deep red patches, and polished along the streamway. Another drainage a short distance southeast also invites exploration.

Twenty Mule Team Canyon

The spectacularly colorful landscape seen most famously at Zabriskie Point extends several miles to the southeast, bordering CA 190, and may be viewed close up via Twenty Mule Team Canyon Road, an unpaved, one-way, lightly-used track that leads up a dry wash then winds through undulating hills back to the highway.

For part of the 2.7 mile distance the eroded badlands at either side have greatly contrasting colors – black or dark brown to the west, cream, yellow and white to the east, and although in the heat of summer this bright, variegated land is best toured only by vehicle, at cooler times when conditions are more favorable for cross-country hiking, the surroundings can be explored.

Nearby are narrow, twisting ravines, old mine tunnels, patches of mineralized rocks, and above all, amazing views over the badlands, across to the salt flats in the center of Death Valley.

The mines in this region, along the northern foothills of the Black Mountains, were established in the early 1900s by prospectors looking for borax and gypsum, both quite plentiful in the exposed layers of the Furnace Creek Formation.

Excavated ore from other Death Valley borax mines was transported by hardworking teams of 20 horses and mules, after which the canyon is named, though it is thought the teams were not employed in this particular area.

Willow Creek

Towards the south end of Death Valley, Willow Creek flows through a moderately deep and narrow canyon for 3 miles, from Willow Spring quite high up in the Black Mountains to the hills at the edge of the valley, where the water sinks below ground or evaporates.

The stream is only significant in winter and spring as during the long, hot summer the canyon dries up completely apart from a few algae-filled pools that persist all year. The creek can be accessed from the top end via the 12.5 mile Gold Valley Road, a rather rough track branching off the gravel Greenwater Valley Road, though some sections need a 4WD vehicle.

The lower end is much easier to reach by walking 2 miles from the main valley drive, and although the canyon has a number of high dryfalls that can only be passed in the downward direction with the aid of ropes, the west end makes for a nice, easy hike of 3 hours or so, through a short but scenic stretch of narrows.

Willow Creek is not signposted and has no official trail. Parking for the hike is at a gravel pit a quarter mile from the highway along a side track, starting 14 miles south of Badwater and a short distance north of Mormon Point.

From the pit a faint, developing path heads north following the base of small hills towards the wide wash that emerges from the canyon, at this point a typical Death Valley drainage of jumbled pebbles and boulders deposited by seasonal flash floods.

The narrows begin after a 1.5 mile walk upstream and soon the canyon is bordered by near-vertical cliffs of jagged, grey brown igneous rock, which is polished and lighter grey around the streambed.

The creek flows intermittently over the stony floor, below ground in some places though rising to form cascades and pools where the surface is bare rock.

There are several nice passages and waterfalls but it is not long before the gorge is blocked by a 40 foot high two-stage fall that is not climbable. The cliffs at either side are sheer, preventing any easy bypass of the falls.

Starting a little way back is one possible longer route on the north side – up a gully then across the rocks above, though a high climb would be needed to have a chance of progressing upstream, made more difficult by the steep and somewhat unstable slopes.

The hillsides, and the canyon itself, have good views down to Death Valley nearly 1,000 feet below, over the pinkish-tinged salt pans towards snow-capped Telescope Peak in the Panamint Range.

Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point is an elevated overlook of a colorful, undulating landscape of gullies and mud hills at the edge of the Black Mountains, just a few miles east of Death Valley – from the viewpoint, the flat salt plains on the valley floor are visible in the distance.

In the past it was possible to drive right to the edge of the overlook, and several minutes of the famous Zabriskie Point movie (1970, Antonioni) was set there, but since then a new larger car-park has been constructed lower down and visitors now have a short walk uphill.

Most people do little more than briefly admire the scenery, which is best at sunrise, but it is easy to climb some of the adjacent hills to get a better overall view, or wander down amongst the variegated dunes.

A hiking trail leads through the mounds, down a ravine and into Gower Gulch after 2 miles, while another branch veers north into Golden Canyon.