Southern backcountry roads open:
Harry Wade Road & Warm Springs Road
DEATH VALLEY, Calif. – On December 12, the National Park Service (NPS) announced that 60 additional miles of backcountry roads in the southern end of Death Valley National Park are now open.
Warm Springs Road is fully open. People with high clearance 4×4 vehicles can drive over Mengel Pass between Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Warm Spring Canyon Gold and Talc Mining Historic District, Butte Valley, and Barker Ranch are points of interest along the way.
West Side Road remains closed north of the junction with Warm Springs Road.
Harry Wade Road is a 4×4 route that connects Badwater Road to CA-127 on the park’s southeastern corner. The NPS has only completed interim repairs on the road. Extended sections of the road are a single lane between deep sandy berms, with limited opportunities to pass oncoming vehicles.
All 1,400 miles of roads within Death Valley National Park were damaged by the remnants of Hurricane Hilary on August 20. The NPS, Federal Highway Administration, Caltrans, and Inyo County continue their work to repair the park’s roads.
Information on the park’s current status is at nps.gov/deva.
Death Valley National Park is the homeland of the Timbisha Shoshone and preserves natural resources, cultural resources, exceptional wilderness, scenery, and learning experiences within the nation’s largest conserved desert landscape and some of the most extreme climate and topographic conditions on the planet. Learn more at www.nps.gov/deva.
