Death Valley is the hottest place on Earth and among the driest. Now visitors can kayak through parts of the park in the ephemeral Lake Manly. It emerged in August after Hurricane Hilary and has transformed the landscape.
Traditionally, Death Valley gets about two inches of rain a year, according to National Parks Service Ranger Abigail Wines. In the last six months, however, that number has nearly tripled — receiving nearly five total inches.
The lake formed in what’s called Badwater Basin, which has the lowest elevation in North America, or about 282 feet below sea level, Wines explains. Typically, you can only find a small spring surrounded by miles of flat, white salt plains.
“What happened now is that there's a lake that is about six miles long, three miles wide, and about one foot deep, that is covering the floor of Death Valley,” Wines says. “On days when it's not windy, it's particularly beautiful because it reflects Telescope Peak behind it, which is an 11,000-foot tall mountain, snow-capped right now, that will reflect down in the lake, and it's drop-dead gorgeous.”
Wines, who’s lived in the area for nearly two decades, paddled across the lake on a pack raft last weekend. She describes it as a bizarre but fun experience. She expects the lake to last only for a few more weeks.
If you want to kayak along Lake Manly, Wines suggests prospective visitors schedule a trip within the next two weeks. “After Hurricane Hilary in August, it was only deep enough to kayak for a few weeks, and then it stayed much shallower and smaller, but still creating that beautiful reflecting pond all the way through January, until it got replenished again with that atmospheric river in early February.”
Lake Manly formed millions of years ago, Wines says, and existed during the Ice Ages. Evidence of the ancient body of water can be seen on the horizontal lines along the shoreline, where waves were carved into the mountains surrounding the valley floor. The lake is thought to have been 600 feet in depth.