Every Trail Tells a Story
Dante’s Peak
Escape the crowds at Dante’s View and claim your own summit.
A panorama spanning Badwater to Mt. Whitney.
Cooler temps, starlit nights, and a desert view worthy of poetry – or at least a few brag photos.
The short hike toward Dante’s Peak, perched more than a mile above the valley floor, offers grand vistas of the lowest and highest points in the continental U.S. Beyond Badwater towers 11,049-foot Telescope Peak and farther still, 14,494-foot Mt. Whitney.
From the parking area, an unsigned, but distinct trail leaves the tourists behind and ascends north toward Dante’s Peak. A second unsigned little trail (0.25 mile) extends southwest from the parking area to a rocky promontory popular with photographers. If you’ve ever wanted to outwit the tour-bus crowd, this is your chance. Ten steps down the footpath and you’re already beyond the selfie sticks and sun visors, with the desert wind your only companion.
Hellish names to the contrary, Death Valley, as surveyed from Dante’s View, appears far from lifeless. The dark splotches on the Panamint Mountains are bristlecone pine, pinyon, and juniper. Those small dark spots along the valley floor? Mesquite thickets, oases for kangaroo rats, kit foxes, and the occasional two-legged desert wanderer.
Directly below Dante’s is the vast salt sink, gleaming like a giant white canvas dropped onto the desert floor. The beds of almost pure salt contrast sharply with the brown, gray, tan, and taupe of the surrounding earth – a painter’s palette in parched perfection.
Dante’s View itself was “discovered” for tourists in the 1920s. Charlie Brown – no, not the cartoon character, but a Furnace Creek innkeeper – escorted a group of travel operators up here. Everyone gasped at the panorama and promptly decided that yes, this would make a great stop for Union Pacific’s shiny new Death Valley bus tours. Brown got the contract to build the road, and Dante’s View became the desert’s hottest ticket – well, cool ticket, since it’s often 25 degrees cooler than the valley floor.
And then there’s the 1998 thriller Dante’s View. Jewel thieves, overheated trucks, desert women of mystery – Hollywood couldn’t resist borrowing the name, though the real drama here needs no screenwriter. Sunrise, sunset, or starry night, Dante’s Peak delivers its own epic show.
Take a light jacket, take your time, and above all, take the trail. The view tastes sweeter when you’ve earned it on foot.
From Highway 190, 12 miles east of Furnace Creek, turn south on Dante’s View Road and follow it 13.2 miles to its end at Dante’s View parking area.
Read the interpretive signs at the overlook, then walk north along the road 0.1 mile to pick up the unsigned footpath toward Dante’s Peak. The trail climbs briskly, contours along the west slope, and gains the summit ridge about 0.3 mile out. A final rise leads to the small summit of 5,704-foot Dante’s Peak, with big views in every direction.