Death Valley, Page 2
Stop 3 Dantes View
We are at 5475 feet on the Black Mountains and to the east is the Panamint Range topped by Telescope Peak, 11,049 feet. Down below is Badwater, -282' and 13 miles away it's over two miles high, the greatest amount of relief in North America. Down below is the center of the Death Valley basin, a white flat where the Amargosa River drains. The high temperature, low humidity and high evaporation leaves thousands of years of salt. The upper two-thirds of the Panamints are ragged while the bottom third has alluvial fans coalescing to form an alluvial apron. The foot of the Black Mountains hugs the base with tiny alluvial fans. The Blacks are rising faster than the Panamints as they are active now the Panamints rose long ago. We can see a streak of green along the bottom of the alluvial apron. This is surface water converted to ground water at the fine particles of the valley floor and the water emerges at the edge of the alluvial apron and creates springs. The middle basin also has vegetation from the Furnace Creek wash.
Stop 4 Bottom of Death Valley
We can look at the three basins on the basis of hydrology how the water gets here. The north basin, Cottonball, gets water from Furnace Creek and springs, the south basin, Badwater, from the Amargosa River and the middle basin here from springs on the west side of the Panamints. All basins have saline pools with dissolved minerals. Cottonball has borax. There are different mixtures of “salts” (a metal with a non-metal) in each basin. Due to the high rate of evaporation a mineral crust is on top and even though there is some surface water, most of it is underground. The rough surface here is from salt crystals forming in the mud causing it to heave up. It collapses in the rain and then is rebuilt over and over. This is especially seen in the Devil's Golf Course where the mud hunks are one meter high.