Scenic Death Valley

Today’s post will focus on the rugged and colourful rock formations we saw during our recent visit to Death Valley National Park. We concentrated our visit in the Furnace Creek area in the southwestern section of the park. Today’s pictures are from Artists’ Drive, Zabriskie Point and 20 Mule Train Canyon located in this area.

The following picture is a scene from Zabriskie Point, a vantage point favoured by tourists, artists and photographers for its rugged beauty.

Zabriskie Point is noted for its erosional landscape. It is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago, before Death Valley came into existence. You can clearly see the stratification in the rock, brought into evidence by the tectonic forces that shaped the mountains bordering Death Valley. Zabriskie Point is part of the  Amargosa Mountain Range which borders Death Valley on its eastern side. Access to Zabriskie Point is from the east side of the Amargosa Range, on the outside of the valley. You can see Death Valley’s western bordering range, the Panamint Range in the background of this photograph.

The next picture is from Artists’ Drive, a 9.5 mile loop into the Amargosa Range from its west side.

 

Artists’ Drive rises up to the top of an alluvial fan fed by a deep canyon cut into the Amargosa Range. Artists’ Palette is on the face of the mountains and is noted for having various colors of rock. These colors are caused by the oxidation of different metals(red, pink and yellow is from iron salts, green is from decomposing mica, and manganese produces the purple).

This next scene is from 20 Mule Team Canyon, about a mile southeast of Zabriskie Point. A narrow, one-way road off state highway 190 meanders through some of the most striking scenery in the Death Valley region. Surrounding this short drive are deeply-eroded hills composed of colorful sediments which have been tilted up from their former horizontal position at the bottom of a long, shallow lake basin.

I find it difficult to convey what we saw in three photographs. I’ll wrap up today’s post with a slideshow featuring a mix of pictures from these same three areas, Zabriskie Point, Artists’ Drive and 20 Mule Team Canyon. Simply click on the image below to start the slideshow and then scroll through using the right arrow on your keyboard.