Life and Death in Death Valley
By: Camille Cusumano
Tags: Travel, Death, Desert, Mojave, Adventure Travel

Our initial plan was to camp around the cabin, but Bob and I noted a half-dozen steroid-plumped vehicles, which discouraged that. We all agreed this was a blessing as the cabin on the hill was fair game for strong wind. Thus, pitching camp at the foot of Striped Butte, we were protected, less exposed. Those human interlopers vanished without a trace and we saw no other homo sapiens the rest of the weekend.

We had spirits — tequila, scotch, bourbon, wine — and fine nourishment each evening. In addition to standard vegan, gluten- or dairy-free fare, Kurt from Yuba City cooked up hearty beef tacos. He gifted our palates further with a gallon of his ruby- rich home-pressed juice of pomegranate from his backyard trees. Nectar of the gods. I want Kurt and whoever contributed the chocolate cake on all my desert trips.

As we stood around getting loose and acquainted, sunset ignited a ridge, like clockwork turning it to shimmering gold. We were hardly snug in our tents or Jeeps when coyotes commenced their yipping, and occasionally a burro hee-hawed. I fell asleep wondering if their dissonant songs were the last tunes the hapless Germans had heard.

Golden ridge at sunset with Jeep

Saturday, after early breakfast, we crowded into a few Jeeps and bounced along an uneven grid of dirt roads that drunkenly lace the area. We parked and found the “trailhead,” an unmarked unvegetated patch that Nick and others located through their mobile topo maps.

It was a long full day of hiking down a sandy wash with little shade, the sun hammering persistently at times, but never unbearable. Aside from the broad open range, there were frequent splashes of wild flowers along the way. We had an endpoint in mind, Willow Springs, and we would get there.

But before that turnaround, there was an unsettling milepost. A compact bushy area we recognized from photos was where the Germans had abandoned their green 1996 Plymouth Voyager van, a rental that had aroused alarm when it was not returned. As we stood in silence at this otherwise unremarkable scrap of land, I felt my ire bubble up. How could parents have done this to their small children? I tried to push that sentiment down. It was not easy.

The in-depth story and tragic details of the four Germans can be found here, a long, overly detailed account.

It wasn’t until October of that same year, 1996, that the van was spotted from the air and located with three flat tires, but no trace of the four individuals. A dated German guidebook found in the van pointed to the adults’ probable next mistake: They started hiking east — in July! I’m not sure the exact date the four were eventually presumed dead but it wasn’t until 2009 that some human bones were located by Tom Mahoud, a search and rescue man, and shown to belong to Egbert. The children’s remains have never been found.

Above photo appears in Desert Survivors newsletter, October, 2019.

Understandably, some of us found this story too unbearably tragic. We trained our focus on natural wonders at hand. It was after all a banner year for wildflowers. I spotted, to name a few: desert dandelion, gravel ghost, desert star, yerba santa, Bigelow’s tickseed, coreopsis, desert trumpet, brown-eyed primrose, and lots of deep purple phacelia. There were scudding lizards, morphing caterpillars and their mature kin, butterflies. And of course, there were burros to mar an otherwise perfect tableau.