HELL ON EARTH
Death Valley National Park of California and adjacent Nevada sits as deep as 282 feet below sea level near Badwater, the lowest land in the western hemisphere. Yet Telescope Peak in the Panamint Range, 11,049 feet high, is in the park less than 20 miles west of Badwater, and Mt. Whitney, at 14,494 feet the highest peak in the continental United States, is only about 80 miles away.
Death Valley is the hottest, driest place in the U. S. On July 10, 1913, the temperature reached 134 degrees F (57 degrees C), and 125 F is common. All of the rainfall (about 2 inches or 5 cm per year) evaporates quickly.
DEATH VALLEY FACTS
Area:
3,367,627.68 acres
1,362,860.25 hectares
Highest Point:
Telescope Peak- 11,049 feet
3,367.7 meters
Lowest Point:
Badwater: -282 feet
-86 meters
Highest Temperature:
134 F 56.6 C
Lowest Temperature:
15 F -9.4 C
Animals & Plants
Mammals: 51 species
Reptiles: 36 Species
Amphibians: 5 species
Fishes: 5 species
Birds: 346 Species
Yep thats right! A MALLARD!
Plants: 1042 Species
THE ROCKS
The Racetrack Playa, at an elevation of 1131 m, is a dry lakebed nestled in the Panamint Range in Death Valley National Park, California.
Deep in the heart of the California desert lies one of the natural world's most puzzling mysteries: the moving rocks of Death Valley. These are not ordinary moving rocks that tumble down mountainsides in avalanches, are carried along riverbeds by flowing water, or are tossed aside by animals. These rocks, some as heavy as 700 pounds, are inexplicably transported across a virtually flat desert plain, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long. They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no one has ever seen them move.
Behind the rocks--some small, some the size of boulders--are the tracks, hardened into the playa surface as if the rocks had been bulldozed across a once muddy lakebed and then "fossilized" by the desert sun. But nowhere is there a trace of what propelled the rocks--no footprints, no tire tracks, nothing to reveal the bulldozer that pushed hundreds of pounds of dolomite rock, or why.
GETTING THERE
Take Highway 395 south to Lone Pine, Highway 136 and then Highway 190 toward Death Valley.
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