by Shane Byrne

This semester we returned to Death Valley after a gap of five years (not coincidently, the graduate student turnover timescale!).

Recent flood damage within the park provided the impetus needed to mix up some of the sites we stopped and camped at. Dante’s View is a great place to see the valley (from the east), but then again, so is Aguereberry Point (from the west). It was at this latter location that we really kicked off our tour of the valley and the closely-packed geological wonders it contains.

A favorite of hydrology students everywhere is the diversion of the enormous Furnace Creek wash through the relatively tiny Gower Gulch. This 1941 engineering adventure led to huge amounts of erosion as the drainage system struggled to return to something approaching equilibrium. All that eroded material goes somewhere—unfortunately it’s dumped on the main park highway, which the park service now bulldozes clear regularly. There’s been clearly visible erosion even since we visited in 2012. Only a small plug of bedrock now separates the main Furnace Creek wash and Gower’s Gulch. Once that goes, the erosion rate will rapidly spike as the Furnace Creek sediment empties en masse through Gower’s Gulch. Sadly, route 190 sits on top of this sediment and so its continued existence hangs by a geological thread. Although an impending logistical disaster for the park, the readjustment of the hydrological system is fascinating for us to watch.

There are few places in the world where so much diverse geology is crammed into such a small area. Dune fields, mud flows, breccia conglomerates, steam explosion craters, old lake shorelines, salt polygons and salt weathered boulders were all on our itinerary are just a sample of what is available. Some things like the sliding rocks of Racetrack Playa can be seen in very few locations and that was well worth the bone-jarring hours of driving it took to get there.

Trips like these are always bonding experiences for us especially when we get to set tents up in 50 mph winds in a dust storm as happened one night. However, several broken tents later we had the ample compensation of a hot meal and good company at the Badwater Saloon!