There are all kinds of ongoing road condition issues due to both severe winter snowfall in recent years following the drought, as well as exceptional summer flashfloods on the desert side of the range. A lot of repairs have been completed these past two years, but not all. In all of these areas never trust an auto navigation device - they can lead you to a dead end in the middle of nowhere. The major paved roads intersecting Death Valley are straightforward, but have themselves been severely impacted time to time from flash flooding. But the formal Govt websites of the NP Service and Inyo National Forest are kept well updated per road conditions.
The road up to the Bristlecones is paved only as far as Schulman Grove, which does have some great panoramic views along it. But
the more classic section of the road just begins there, and follows the crest at around 11,000 ft all the way to Patriarch Grove, where the oldest and most weather-beaten trees are. It's a long bumpy drive doable in a passenger car, but slow and rough. Normally none of the road is open in late Spring at all - that would have been an exceptional drought circumstance. Bring a warm jacket even in Summer. The views are wonderful, along with the trees and rock formations. Allow an entire day for that excursion from somewhere nearby on Hwy
395 like Lone Pine or Bishop - not from distant Beatty or Death Valley!
Above Death Valley itself, branching off the main highway a little beyond Stove Pipe Wells, is the narrow but paved Wildrose Road, leading up to the charcoal kilns, with its own brief but easy unpaved side branch to Aguereberry Point, one of the best overlooks of
Death Valley, which gives an idea of its sheer scale. I've been there one of the times there was a shallow 35 mile long lake in the bottom of Death Valley after exceptional winter rains. But it looked like a little pond from up there! Check ahead of time about snow conditions or road repairs.
The Mesquite Dunes are not far from Stovepipe Wells, as well as the popular Mosaic Canyon trail.
One the east side of the Valley above Furnace Creek, or coming from Beatty, you have easy access to the paved road leading to the famous overlooks of Zabriskie Point and Dante's View, best visited at dawn or sunset.
But the road headed into the north end of the Valley, toward the mysterious Racetrack playa and Ubehebe Crater, is a long bumpy marathon drive. Beyond that, it's strictly 4WD into the equally spectacular northern half of the Park, Saline Valley, if the track is negotiable at all from that direction. Attempting it in hot months is tantamount to suicide. I was once nearly trampled by wild burros back in there; then to add insult to injury, had a venison steak stolen right off my hot Coleman tailgate stove by a coyote. That's the kind of drive where you want two spare tires, a spare Jerry can of gas, and two weeks worth of food and water just in case. I mention it only to give a sense of scale of just how big the Park is. The part most people drive through on paved roads, as big as that is, is only a fourth.
