MARK WAITE / PVT Gary Orsak and Mike Hren broil as they take a break outside the Furnace Creek Visitors Center. MARK WAITE / PVT The temperature hit 128 degrees last Friday afternoon at the Furnace Creek Visitors Center. The official high stood at 129 degrees. MARK WAITE / PVT While the price of regular unleaded gas in Pahrump is back down to almost $3 per gallon, the gas station at Furnace Creek is still at $3.83 for regular unleaded and over $4 per gallon for premium. Advertisement

DEATH VALLEY -- Motorcyclists Gary Orsak, from Farmington, N.M., and Mike Hren, from Grand Junction, Colo., paused while on a tour of the West at the entrance to the Furnace Creek Visitors Center Friday afternoon.

Orsak shed his T-shirt, sweating in the intense heat and taking shelter under the salt cedars in the parking lot.

The two in-laws traveled all the way up to Seattle and down the coast of the Pacific Northwest, but said it was so hot in Death Valley they had difficulty breathing.

The temperature on the digital readout in the visitors center at Furnace Creek read 128 degrees as of 3 p.m. Friday. Terry Baldino, chief of interpretation for Death Valley National Park, said the actual high reached 129 degrees. The overnight low was a toasty 96 degrees.

It's some consolation for Pahrump residents who experienced highs above 110 last week, including 114 degrees Thursday. Las Vegas tied a record Monday for the ninth consecutive day with a high temperature of 110 degrees or above, recorded at McCarran International Airport.

Baldino said when he first moved to Death Valley from Colorado he figured it was all the same when it got above 100 degrees. Not true, he said.

"There is an amazing difference in the air. It's so much more heated up, even when you breath you can just feel it in your lungs, it's hot. You just don't want to spend much time out there at all," Baldino said.

Some tourists come for the extreme heat. Baldino said a study done 10 years ago showed 70 percent of the summer visitors were foreigners, mostly from Germany, France and Italy. He said just sitting in the visitors center listening to the different languages being spoken, like the young couple speaking the Queen's English Friday afternoon, inquiring about tourist sites, indicated it's probably an accurate percentage today.

The visitors center recorded 23,200 sign-ins in May and 19,600 in June, Baldino said. By comparison the totals in cooler months, for November 2006, were over 23,000 and for December over 28,000, he said.

But Baldino said, "Overall for the year we're still down 3-1/2 percent."

Prior to 1991, summers were "just deader than a doornail" Baldino said.

"For some reason in the early '90s Europeans got a hold of the idea of coming to Death Valley, making it one of their destinations," he said. "One of the first things they ask, 'Can I put that in my book, I was there when it was 129?' That to them is one of those memorable moments being in a national park in the United States "

Visitation figures took a dive after the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. Baldino said annual visitor estimates were over 1 million people prior to that date, but dropped to 750,000 and have slowly risen to over 800,000 annually today.

Baldino said he's fielded inquiries recently from the media in places like Denver, Los Angeles and Chicago, even a call-in radio show in Washington state, just as on other summers when the mercury creeps up into the 120s.

The high of 129 Friday tied a record and was only five degrees shy of the all-time high temperature recorded at the Greenland Ranch, the present site of Furnace Creek, before the park was created. That 134-degree record was set July 10, 1913.

In the summer of 2001 Death Valley weather statistics show there were 154 days above 100 degrees, in 1996 there were 40 days over 120 degrees.

The average high temperature in July for Death Valley is 115 degrees, the average low 88 degrees. The current "heat spell" began July 3 when the mercury hit 121 degrees. July 4 it went up to 126 degrees, and by last Thursday, July 5, it crept up another degree before topping out at 129 degrees Friday.

It "cooled down" to a high of 126 Saturday, then 121 degrees Sunday and Monday. Baldino said it was the third time the mercury hit 129 degrees since he arrived in the park in 1997. It hasn't hit 130 degrees again since 1913.

"My wife and I finally bought a home in Pahrump. The biggest difference is temperatures do drop down (in Pahrump) whereas in Death Valley they do not. The low temperature was 95 the night before. There's nights where it doesn't even drop down below triple digits before the sun comes up," he said.

The dark-colored rock absorbs the sun and the deep valley also helps ensure hot temperatures, he said.

"I find that probably the most oppressing thing about being in Death Valley, you couldn't escape the heat, even at night," he said.

Fortunately, park staff haven't had to respond to any fatalities involving hikers perishing in the heat this summer. There was one incident in early June, when a couple had car trouble, hiked into the mountains in the Panamint Range and slept in an abandoned miner's cabin. A helicopter was dispatched to search for them after fellow employees reported they didn't show up for work in Ridgecrest, Calif. the next day. They were spotted from the air, flagging down the helicopter the next day, Baldinio said.

Four permanent employees remain at the Furnace Creek Visitors Center all year, but three seasonal employees leave during the summer, Baldino said. Maintenance employees, such as those patching up the roads, work at the higher elevations of the park in the summer, he said.

The Timbisha Shoshone tribe has a reservation at the entrance to Furnace Creek.

Then there are the real die-hards, the runners in the 30th annual Kiehl's Badwater Ultramarathon, which takes place from July 23 to July 25 and covers 135 miles race from Badwater, the lowest point in the country, to Whitney Portals, at 8,360 feet.