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Titus Canyon: Through the Grapevine
STORY BY JAN MOLLER * PHOTOGRAPHY BY JERRY HENKEL
Thick clouds covered the western sky when we awoke before dawn on a chilly late-October morning in Beatty, Nevada. Our trip through Titus Canyon almost ended before it began.
If there is a cardinal rule for anyone planning to drive this one-way road west through the Grapevine Mountains into Death Valley National Park, it is this: Do not, under any circumstances, get caught in a rainstorm. The reason for this rule would become clear hours later, when we found ourselves in a majestic canyon where the limestone cliffs stand barely 15 feet apart. It was easy to imagine how a sudden rainstorm could transform the road into a rushing river and our four-wheel drive vehicles into flotsam.
The forecast called for a 10 percent chance of rain, not bad if you're planning a picnic but enough of a concern that we briefly considered postponing the trip. With no updated weather information from the park so early on this Sunday morning, we asked a waitress at the Burro Inn motel for her opinion. The clouds probably would burn off, she predicted, as soon as the day heated up.
With that advice, and our instinct suggesting the clouds were not harboring thunderstorms, our two-car caravan left Beatty at 7:15 a.m. and headed west down Nevada Route 374 toward the Titus Canyon road. ...
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The March/April 2003 Issue is out. Find it at Las Vegas bookstores today.
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