On Friday we
arrived at Panamint Valley at 10:30am, and looked at some of the amazing views
over Panamint and Death Valley.
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| View of Death Valley |
We then
continued driving into Death Valley, when we came across a closed road. This
just happened to be the road that we were supposed to be driving down for the
day so that we could do our work! After a few moments of despair, and some not
so carefully chosen words, we headed off to find out what else we could do.
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| Closed road! |
We found a
closed off town, a few sand dunes (where we had a bit of time off), a halite
salt pan and a couple of other things, but we didn’t manage to do any work, so
we headed to Furnace Creek Ranch at 2pm.
At 3pm we
went to the Beatty Cut-Off Road to look for evidence of reworking of gravels on
pluvial (extended period of abundant rainfall) lakes in Death Valley that
occurred in the Late Pleistocene (0.1 to 0.01 million years ago). The deposits
here represent a transgressive period in a lake, which is when the sediment
supply rate is less than the lake level rise, causing an overall rise in the
water level. We left there at 5:10pm, and got back to Furnace Creek Ranch where
we stayed the night, and had a swim in the naturally heated pool.
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| Beatty Cut-Off Road |
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| Diagram of a Transgressive Period |
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