In 2016 Death Valley had a rare event that comes around every ten years or so, historically. It isn’t like it is something that is scheduled, but instead is a natural phenomenon that only happens when weather conditions are perfect. Seeds of wildflowers lay dormant in the ground of the area, not being given the proper conditions to actually germinate, laying in a dormant state that can last for decades without damaging them. When the conditions are correct, featuring late winter rain and early spring warm temperatures, hundreds of millions of wild flowers spring to life at the same time, creating blankets of color that are completely out of the ordinary for the hottest and driest place on earth. In an area that once recorded a temperature of 135 degrees, wildflowers are super rare.
In 2016, tours of Death Valley spiked as far as interest from people worldwide, as they scrambled to get to Death Valley between early March and late April. The superbloom had happened, and word spread through social media that Death Valley was covered in yellow and purple flowers. Unfortunately for many, the short timeframe that the superbloom sees (roughly one month) when it is at its best viewing stages did not allow many people to actually book their trips to Las Vegas or to nearby towns in California, from where they could either drive or take a tour bus to Death Valley. Once many people had found out that it had happened, it was just too late to make arrangements. For the people who could manage to get to Death Valley, they found far higher numbers of other people there, and heavier traffic than usual. Basically, once word was out that the superbloom was in effect, a lot of people wanted to go. If you planned on taking one of our tours, you would find that they were selling out quickly, and many days were completely booked. While we do our best to accommodate everyone who wants to go on a specific tour, we just don’t have space for everyone when an area becomes super popular.
That brings us to 2017, and a potential second chance. At this point in time, it looks like weather conditions have been right for the superbloom to happen again this year. This has so few cases of it happening that we cannot comment on when the last time it happened was. Previous to 2016, the last superbloom was ten years previous. With conditions looking favorable for an even bigger superbloom this year due to so many fresh seeds from the wildflowers last year, we encourage you to book your Death Valley tours for March and April as soon as possible. We expect them to sell out quickly as soon as the pictures of the superbloom start getting posted on Facebook and on the news, and we want to make sure that if you missed it last year that you have the opportunity to witness this “once in a lifetime” experience again. It appears that Death Valley is willing to give us “twice in a lifetime,” so are you going to be part of it?