Death Valley

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Today we headed into Death Valley from Beatty. Death Valley is a long expanse of scorched earth, big rock formations, sand dunes, and salt planes all surrounded by a long strip of mountain ranges on each side.

It is one of the hottest places on earth and has the second hottest recorded temperature in the world: 57 degrees C in July 1913. In July the average high temperate is 46 degrees Celsius and in January is 18 degrees C. The reason why the valley gets so hot is to do with the geography. For a start it is extremely dry, as the moisture in the air moving towards the valley precipates completely by the time it gets there as it travels over a number of mountains. The second reason is that being surrounded by mountains, the hot air that rises does not have a chance to escape, cools as it gets higher, then descends into the valley again where it gets warmed up by compression and the process repeats itself over and over during the day getting hotter and hotter. Another reason is due to the valley being so low - the temperate increases 5.5 degrees for each 1000 foot drop in elevation.

Death Valley contains the lowest point in the “Western Hemisphere” 282 feet below sea level at a point called Badwater. The ranges on either side reach up to 11,000 feet and actually have snow on top of them. It is possible then to drive your car from -282ft to 11,000ft in a couple of hours.

As we headed toward Death Valley we just started descending all of a sudden without even going up a hill first, like going into a huge ditch. We watched the temperature gauge move steadily up from 7 degrees C in Beatty to a nice 20 degrees C as we descended into the desert. We were really glad that we weren’t there in summer as it was the perfect temperature and any hotter wouldn’t have been bearable walking around the place. Apparently it is still really popular in summer however as people from all over the place just want to experience the heat. The locals think that they are completely nuts and just watch and laugh when they see tourists jump out of their air conditioned car, hold the breath and run across to the lowest point, touch it and go running back into their cars before driving on.

After taking many a photo, we headed off to some random town (Tehachapi) in between Death Valley and Yosemite for a sleep. We got in at midnight. In order to get to Yosemite from Death Valley we had to double back south before going north again. This is because the road into Yosemite from the East (Tioga Pass) is closed over winter as it gets completely snowed under. Apparently it is a beautiful drive however.

Tomorrow is Yosemite - we are preparing ourselves for the freeze already.

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Photos

Mini Oasis
Furnace Creek

Standing at Badwater Basin
Lowest (hottest?) point in western hemisphere.

Comments

[Jeremy]

YOu chould be doing the mother f-ing moonwalk in one of that photo entitled "standing on the moon"!!!

[Haemoglobin]

Yea, I should have been huh. Would have been O for Orsum!