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Route: Red Rock Canyon, Death Valley, Alabama Hills - Mt Whitney, Joshua Tree, Santa Cruz Island-Pacific Coast Highway, San Diego.
Places: Grimshaw Lake Natural Area, Death Valley Junction, Dante's View, Zabriskie Point, 20 Mule Team Canyon, Golden Canyon Trail, Manly Beacon, Badwater Basin, Devil's Golf Course, Artist's Palette, Salt Creek Interpretive Trail.
Wildlife & flora: Wild mustang, Chukar partridge, Allenrolfea occidentalis, American pipit, Say's phoebe, Rock wren.
Grimshaw Lake Natural Area
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Grimshaw Lake Natural Area
Death Valley National Park straddles eastern California and Nevada.
It is the hottest place on earth. The official highest air temperature ever recorded was 134°F (56.7°C) in Death Valley, California
It’s known for Titus Canyon, with a ghost town and colorful rocks, and Badwater Basin’s salt flats, North America's lowest point. Above, Telescope Peak Trail weaves past pine trees. North of the spiky salt mounds known as the Devil’s Golf Course, rattlesnakes live in Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes.
Near Death Valley Junction
Wild mustang
Death Valley National Park straddles eastern California and Nevada.
It is the hottest place on earth. The official highest air temperature ever recorded was 134°F (56.7°C) in Death Valley, California
It’s known for Titus Canyon, with a ghost town and colorful rocks, and Badwater Basin’s salt flats, North America's lowest point. Above, Telescope Peak Trail weaves past pine trees. North of the spiky salt mounds known as the Devil’s Golf Course, rattlesnakes live in Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes.
From "Geology of Death Valley National Park: Landforms, Crustal Extension, Geologic History, Road Guides"
Death Valley is one of the best places on earth so see Evidence of Snowball Earth from 700,00 million years ago (when the earth during millions of years became completely frozen).
Death Valley also records the global period of thawing that happened after the snowball earth ended, 635 million years ago. You can see for example the Noonday Dolomite in Mosaic Canyon. With the thawing begins multicellular life on earth.
From nps.gov: Throughout most of the Paleozoic Era (542 - 251 million years ago) Death Valley area was a shallow warm sea.
The next phase happened throughout most of the Mesozoic Era (251 - 65.5 million years ago) when the two plates beneath Death Valley warped mountains and pushed the sea to the west. While the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada formed, active mountain building alternated with times when erosion prevailed, working to breaking down the mountains that had formed.
The mountain building weakened the crust: hot, molten material beneath the surface welled up and erupted at these weak points. The volcanic activity spanned much of the Tertiary Period (65.5 - 2 million years ago.). From the latest eruptions we can see today the vivide colors of the Artist’s Palette and Death Valley’s famous borate mineral deposits.
Death Valley began to form approximately three million years ago, when compression was replaced by extensional forces. This "pulling apart" of Earth’s crust allowed large blocks of land to slowly slide past one another along faults, forming alternating valleys and mountain ranges. Badwater Basin, the Death Valley salt pan and the Panamint mountain range comprise one block that is rotating eastward as a structural unit. The valley floor has been steadily slipping downward, subsiding along the fault that lies at the base of the Black Mountains. Subsidence continues today. Evidence of this can be seen in the fresh fault scarps exposed near Badwater.
The basin continues to subside and the mountains rise ever higher.
Concurrent with the subsidence has been slow but continuous erosion. Water carries rocks, gravel, sand and silt down from surrounding hills and deposits them on the valley floor.
Beneath Badwater lies more than 11,000 feet of accumulated sediment and salts.
Death Valley offers a diverse rock record stretching throughout most of geologic time. In the Black Mountains you can see exposed 1.8 billion-year-old metamorphic rocks.
The first rocks of Death Valley formed about 2 billion years when all the continents collided to form a supercontinent, Columbia. Death Valley formed from the collision of Antarctica with North America continents. All life was single-celled at that time and lived only in the oceans.The continents were lifeless rock (see Geologic Story Video).
The first rocks of Death Valley formed about 2 billion years when all the continents collided to form a supercontinent, Columbia. Death Valley formed from the collision of Antarctica with North America continents. All life was single-celled at that time and lived only in the oceans.The continents were lifeless rock (see Geologic Story Video).
Death Valley is one of the best places on earth so see Evidence of Snowball Earth from 700,00 million years ago (when the earth during millions of years became completely frozen).
Death Valley also records the global period of thawing that happened after the snowball earth ended, 635 million years ago. You can see for example the Noonday Dolomite in Mosaic Canyon. With the thawing begins multicellular life on earth.
From nps.gov: Throughout most of the Paleozoic Era (542 - 251 million years ago) Death Valley area was a shallow warm sea.
The next phase happened throughout most of the Mesozoic Era (251 - 65.5 million years ago) when the two plates beneath Death Valley warped mountains and pushed the sea to the west. While the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada formed, active mountain building alternated with times when erosion prevailed, working to breaking down the mountains that had formed.
The mountain building weakened the crust: hot, molten material beneath the surface welled up and erupted at these weak points. The volcanic activity spanned much of the Tertiary Period (65.5 - 2 million years ago.). From the latest eruptions we can see today the vivide colors of the Artist’s Palette and Death Valley’s famous borate mineral deposits.
Death Valley began to form approximately three million years ago, when compression was replaced by extensional forces. This "pulling apart" of Earth’s crust allowed large blocks of land to slowly slide past one another along faults, forming alternating valleys and mountain ranges. Badwater Basin, the Death Valley salt pan and the Panamint mountain range comprise one block that is rotating eastward as a structural unit. The valley floor has been steadily slipping downward, subsiding along the fault that lies at the base of the Black Mountains. Subsidence continues today. Evidence of this can be seen in the fresh fault scarps exposed near Badwater.
The basin continues to subside and the mountains rise ever higher.
Concurrent with the subsidence has been slow but continuous erosion. Water carries rocks, gravel, sand and silt down from surrounding hills and deposits them on the valley floor.
Beneath Badwater lies more than 11,000 feet of accumulated sediment and salts.
Dante's View
Dante's View is a viewpoint terrace at 1,669 m height, on the north side of Coffin Peak, along the crest of the Black Mountains, overlooking Death Valley. Dante's View is about 25 km south of Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park.
During North America’s last major Ice Age, the valley was part of a system of large lakes. The lakes disappeared approximately 10,000 years ago, evaporating as the climate warmed. As the lakes evaporated, vast fields of salt deposits were left behind. A smaller, now vanished, lake system occupied the basin floor about 3000 years ago.
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Dante's View is a viewpoint terrace at 1,669 m height, on the north side of Coffin Peak, along the crest of the Black Mountains, overlooking Death Valley. Dante's View is about 25 km south of Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park.
During North America’s last major Ice Age, the valley was part of a system of large lakes. The lakes disappeared approximately 10,000 years ago, evaporating as the climate warmed. As the lakes evaporated, vast fields of salt deposits were left behind. A smaller, now vanished, lake system occupied the basin floor about 3000 years ago.
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| Chukar partridge |
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| Chukar partridge |
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| Chukar partridge |
Zabriskie Point
Zabriskie Point is a part of the Amargosa Range located east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in California, United States, noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago—long before Death Valley came into existence.
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Zabriskie Point is a part of the Amargosa Range located east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in California, United States, noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago—long before Death Valley came into existence.
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20 Mule Team Canyon
Twenty-mule teams were teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that ferried borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1889. They traveled from mines across the Mojave Desert to the nearest railroad spur, 165 miles (275 km) away in Mojave. The routes were from the Harmony and Amargosa Borax Works to Daggett, California, and later Mojave, California. After Harmony and Amargosa shut down in 1888, the mule team's route was moved to the mines at Borate, 3 miles east of Calico, back to Daggett. There they worked from 1891 until 1898 when they were replaced by the Borate and Daggett Railroad. Twenty-mule team
Golden Canyon Trail
Golden Canyon Trail is a 3 mile moderately trafficked out and back trail located near Shoshone, California and is rated as difficult. The trail is primarily used for hiking and trail running and is best used from October until March.
🌐 Map
Golden Canyon Trail is a 3 mile moderately trafficked out and back trail located near Shoshone, California and is rated as difficult. The trail is primarily used for hiking and trail running and is best used from October until March.
🌐 Map
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| Manly Beacon |
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| Manly Beacon |
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| Manly Beacon |
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| Manly Beacon |
Badwater Basin (282 ft (86 m) below sea level)
Badwater Basin is an endorheic basin (retains water and allows no outflow, so it equilibrates through evaporation) in Death Valley National Park, Death Valley, Inyo County, California, noted as the lowest point in North America, with a depth of 282 ft (86 m) below sea level. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous 48 United States, is only 84.6 miles (136 km) to the northwest.
The site itself consists of a small spring-fed pool of "bad water" next to the road in a sink; the accumulated salts of the surrounding basin make it undrinkable, thus giving it the name. The pool does have animal and plant life, including pickleweed, aquatic insects, and the Badwater snail.
Adjacent to the pool, where water is not always present at the surface, repeated freeze–thaw and evaporation cycles gradually push the thin salt crust into hexagonal honeycomb shapes.
The pool is not the lowest point of the basin: the lowest point (which is only slightly lower) is several miles to the west and varies in position, depending on rainfall and evaporation patterns. The salt flats are hazardous to traverse (in many cases being only a thin white crust over mud), and so the sign marking the low point is at the pool instead. The basin was considered the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere until the discovery of Laguna del Carbón in Argentina at −344 ft (−105 m).
Map
The salt flats are the remains of an evaporated lake whose levels fluctuated over hundreds of thousands of years as the climate of North America varied.
Badwater Basin is an endorheic basin (retains water and allows no outflow, so it equilibrates through evaporation) in Death Valley National Park, Death Valley, Inyo County, California, noted as the lowest point in North America, with a depth of 282 ft (86 m) below sea level. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous 48 United States, is only 84.6 miles (136 km) to the northwest.
The site itself consists of a small spring-fed pool of "bad water" next to the road in a sink; the accumulated salts of the surrounding basin make it undrinkable, thus giving it the name. The pool does have animal and plant life, including pickleweed, aquatic insects, and the Badwater snail.
Adjacent to the pool, where water is not always present at the surface, repeated freeze–thaw and evaporation cycles gradually push the thin salt crust into hexagonal honeycomb shapes.
The pool is not the lowest point of the basin: the lowest point (which is only slightly lower) is several miles to the west and varies in position, depending on rainfall and evaporation patterns. The salt flats are hazardous to traverse (in many cases being only a thin white crust over mud), and so the sign marking the low point is at the pool instead. The basin was considered the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere until the discovery of Laguna del Carbón in Argentina at −344 ft (−105 m).
Map
The salt flats are the remains of an evaporated lake whose levels fluctuated over hundreds of thousands of years as the climate of North America varied.
Devil's Golf Course
The Devil's Golf Course is a large salt pan on the floor of Death Valley, located in the Mojave Desert within Death Valley National Park. The park is in eastern California.
It was named after a line in the 1934 National Park Service guide book to Death Valley National Monument, which stated that "Only the devil could play golf" on its surface, due to a rough texture from the large halite salt crystal formations.
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The Devil's Golf Course is a large salt pan on the floor of Death Valley, located in the Mojave Desert within Death Valley National Park. The park is in eastern California.
It was named after a line in the 1934 National Park Service guide book to Death Valley National Monument, which stated that "Only the devil could play golf" on its surface, due to a rough texture from the large halite salt crystal formations.
🌐 Map
Artist's Palette
Artist's Drive rises up to the top of an alluvial fan fed by a deep canyon cut into the Black Mountains. Artist's Palette is an area on the face of the Black Mountains noted for a variety of rock colors. These colors are caused by the oxidation of different metals (iron compounds produce red, pink and yellow, decomposition of tuff-derived mica produces green, and manganese produces purple).
Called the Artist Drive Formation, the rock unit provides evidence for one of the Death Valley area's most violently explosive volcanic periods. The Miocene-aged formation is made up of cemented gravel, playa deposits, and volcanic debris, perhaps 5,000 feet (1500 m) thick. Chemical weathering and hydrothermal alteration cause the oxidation and other chemical reactions that produce the variety of colors displayed in the Artist Drive Formation and nearby exposures of the Furnace Creek Formation.
🌐 Map
Artist's Drive rises up to the top of an alluvial fan fed by a deep canyon cut into the Black Mountains. Artist's Palette is an area on the face of the Black Mountains noted for a variety of rock colors. These colors are caused by the oxidation of different metals (iron compounds produce red, pink and yellow, decomposition of tuff-derived mica produces green, and manganese produces purple).
Called the Artist Drive Formation, the rock unit provides evidence for one of the Death Valley area's most violently explosive volcanic periods. The Miocene-aged formation is made up of cemented gravel, playa deposits, and volcanic debris, perhaps 5,000 feet (1500 m) thick. Chemical weathering and hydrothermal alteration cause the oxidation and other chemical reactions that produce the variety of colors displayed in the Artist Drive Formation and nearby exposures of the Furnace Creek Formation.
🌐 Map
The origin of Mushroom Rock has been debated for many years. Generally, most people thought it was a ventifact as these are quite common on the low hill on the west side of the main highway across from the exit of the Artist’s Drive.
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| Mushroom Rock |
Salt Creek Interpretive Trail
Half-mile boardwalk loop trail over desert sand & along spring-fed Salt Creek, home to rare pupfish.
⏳ Dec 14-15,2016
Allenrolfea occidentalis
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| American Pipit (Anthus rubescens) |
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| American pipit (Anthus rubescens) |
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| Say's phoebe (Sayornis saya) - flycatcher |
Rock wren
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