After a relative dropped off Roger Homrich in Death Valley — taillights fading into the darkness — the stillness and desolation of the desert surrounded Homrich and a momentary panic hit.

He was alone in a vast, empty wilderness with no means of communication and nothing to rely on but his skills and weeks of preparation.

That sinking feeling flirted with fear and the only thing Homrich could do was to start a journey no one else had attempted: hiking the length of Death Valley National Park in one trip.

"So many things could go wrong," he remembers thinking. "You have this thought that goes through your mind — I might not make it out of this thing.'"

So he started walking, one step, then the next and the next until after 224 miles over the course of 15 days he reached the park's northern limit.

"I had to have the greatest respect for the land I was on because it was very unforgiving," said Homrich, 26, of Sherman Oaks, who teaches cinematography part time at Brooks Institute in Ventura.

Over the course of his trek in March, he scaled rock cliffs, suffered through a 100-degree swing in temperatures, hiked through sand and snow and marveled at the sounds of solitude.

It all began in a church pew.

Homrich had done other hikes through the Sierra Nevada and the Smoky Mountains, but he was craving a path less traveled where solitude was plentiful. He couldn't figure out where to go until he heard Psalms 23 in church.

As the minister read, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," he knew Death Valley was the place for him. But that was about the only easy part of his decision.

The knowledge of experience

Because nobody had done the length of the park in one trip, information was limited. He found George Huxtable, who had written a book on hiking the park in sections.

"This kind of activity, as you may understand, attracts a thin audience," Huxtable said. "Whereas the Sierras are welcoming and say Come swim in my lakes, walk in my meadows,' the desert is more challenging, almost more of a dare."

With Huxtable's help, Homrich began plotting a route where there was no trail. After calculating how much water he'd need — 1.5 gallons a day for drinking and cooking — he enlisted his brother-in-law's help and spent two days caching food and water. That was one of the more challenging parts of the trip. While stashing water and food in 12 different places, he blew out two tires, ran out of gas and got stuck in the sand and snow.

The caching process took longer than planned, and Homrich got started in the dead of night. The car pulled away and he was suddenly very much alone, the only company a sinking feeling he had about his undertaking.

But that didn't last long as he started to revel in the solitude.

"When you take away all the distractions, all the small stuff we preoccupy ourselves with, all the concerns that have little merit, and you are all alone in the desert, you have time to prioritize and think of what is important in life, the importance of career versus family life. What do you want to be known as — the greatest photographer or the greatest man you can be?" he said.

Not that the journey was an easy one. He hiked from the depths of 282 feet below sea level to an elevation of 8,500 feet. All told, he would climb more than 30,000 vertical feet over his trip.

Homrich constantly consulted his compass to make sure he was headed in the right direction. His backpack weighed 45 pounds, the majority of it in water, and that wasn't always enough. On the second day, he ran out of water before he got to his next stash. Some nights, the wind howled so bad he had to cover his face with a shirt just to keep the sand out of his nose.

Facing weather extremes

Crossing the hottest parts of the park, it felt as though he were walking on a heated stove. Sometimes, to avoid the heat, he hiked at night when the stars lit up the desert. Going through the highest mountains, he was up to his hips in snow. In the higher altitudes he had to walk at night just to keep from shivering.

Once, the wind blew so hard he had to hunker down and wait out a complete brown-out.

Though he'd expected to see lots of rattlesnakes, he never saw one. His biggest brush with wildlife was when a coyote followed him one day.

He hopped over what seemed like an endless field of boulders, always wary of twisting an ankle with no way to get help. On his maps, he marked "red zones," areas where he was a long way from anyone if something went wrong.

But nothing ever did, and the trip was bliss, pushing his body to the limits and letting his mind wander in all that endless silence.

Homrich didn't set out on the trip to be the first at anything. He just wanted to get away from it all and have some time to himself. And it worked.

"I don't remember many times when I wasn't smiling," he said.

On the Net:

http://rogerhomrich.com/deathvalley