In Death Valley, new life

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- The wettest year on record here has transformed this forbidding wilderness of scruffy mountains and buckled earth into a vividly unfamiliar world of wildflowers and reflecting pools, triggering ecological cycles not seen before on so large a scale.

Against a background of snowcapped peaks, the region's contoured badlands and splintery rock towers are festooned with bright yellow, pink, white, and deep purple blossoms spreading in all directions. With the wildflowers have come pollinators, including sphinx moths as big as hummingbirds.

Another surprise: Badwater, usually the site of a salty pond nearly encircled by massive gray cliffs, features a lake 5 miles wide and kayakers and wind surfers gliding over its whitecaps.

''It's not Death Valley at all," visitor Wendy Cutler said. ''I'm calling it Full of Life Valley."

In some places, even the rocks are blooming. Water is forcing mineral salts to the surface, where they erupt in snow-white splotches on sulfur yellow hills.

The dazzling panoramas are drawing huge crowds of tourists and some scientists, eager to take in the scenery before the millions of desert flowers die in the harsh summer sun. Among the visitors was Laura Bush, who vacationed here earlier this month and hiked more than 10 miles with an entourage of friends and Secret Service agents, park authorities said.

''It's our best bloom in history, and the flowers are getting better by the day," said park naturalist Charlie Callagan, who accompanied Bush on several hikes. ''I'm telling folks, 'Hey, you may not see it this good again in your lifetime.' "

Rainfall in this 3.3 million-acre expanse averages less than 2 inches a year. In some years, there is no rain at all.

But this rain year, measured from July to June, ''we've already had 6.19 inches of rain, a record, and we're only eight months into the season," Callagan said.

A destructive storm in August killed two people and washed out some park roads. That was followed by the wettest period since recordkeeping for the park began in 1911. But for the most part, ''we've had the good kind of rain, the kind that is gentle and tends to soak into the soil," park ranger Alan Van Valkenburg said.

All the rain has dissolved protective waxy coatings off millions of seeds that had lain dormant for years in terrain where ground-level temperatures can soar as high as 200 degrees.

Now, more than 50 varieties of wildflowers -- including desert gold, notch-leaf phacelia, gravel ghost, desert star, and desert five-spot -- are grabbing footholds in this unforgiving desert to bloom wherever water collects: alluvial fans, ravines, and roadsides.

No one can say with certainty how great the unprecedented rainfall's ultimate impact will be on Death Valley, the hottest, driest and lowest place in the United States. Long-term ecological shifts are unlikely, given that summer temperatures reach 130 degrees in the shade. But short-term changes are under way. Although no new species have been spotted so far, the rains are likely to trigger population blips in a variety of species.

Vegetarians of all kinds -- stately bighorn sheep, tiny desert shrews, and bulky chuckwalla lizards -- are eating more fresh greenery than they ever have in their lives. Sphinx moth caterpillars, imposing horned creatures the size of an index finger, are browsing on brown-eyed evening primrose flowers.

Birds such as the Say's phoebe, distinguished by its gray throat and cinnamon belly, have been feasting on insects attracted to the flowers. More seeds mean more rodents, and the birds of prey that pursue them: snakes, coyotes, and foxes.

The bloom is expected to peak within the next week or so. Naturalists are predicting that swarms of caterpillars and grasshoppers will follow. ''But it is important to remember," Van Valkenburg said, ''the plants will disappear, once our normal patterns of heat and dryness kick in."

Nonetheless, botanists are flocking to Death Valley and desert regions across the arid Southwest in hope of finding plants that have taken advantage of the unusually wet weather to extend their ranges.

''It's an opportunity of a lifetime to fill in distribution gaps and, perhaps, discover new species in locations that had been regarded as botanical black holes," said Ilene Anderson, a botanist with the California Native Plant Society. ''Seeds go into hibernation in dry times. But for many species, we don't know how long that cycle lasts."

In the meantime, Terry Baldino, the park's assistant chief of interpretation, has hired more employees to keep up with the thousands of visitors arriving each day with the urgent question: ''Where is the best place to see wildflowers?"

At Badwater, not far from places with names such as Coffin Canyon and Funeral Mountains, adventurous souls enjoyed the enormous shallow lake covering the lowest point in North America.

Dan Morache, 33, attracted attention by kiteboarding over the surface. ''I wanted to be the first person to kiteboard Death Valley," Morache said. ''This may not happen again for another 100 years."