Zabriskie Point at sunrise in Death Valley

Death Valley National Park, California

Ripples Through Time

Death Valley National Park

In morning light, the creamy golden-yellows and chocolate browns of Zabriskie Point’s sculpted badlands seem to glow. Manley Beacon rises prominently, framed by the Panamint Mountains to the west.

The startling terrain of Zabriskie Point is being carved mostly from Furnace Creek Formation mudstones, composed of fine silts, clays and volcanic ashfalls deposited as sediments in prehistoric lakes some three to five million years ago, as well as ancient lava flows. Rainfall here—the driest and hottest locale in North America, as well as the lowest can be periodic but intense, so when storms drench the vegetation-sparse landscape, the moisture doesn’t soak into the ground but rather gathers and careens in flash floods down slopes, rills and gullies, eroding the soft mudstones.

Nikon D7200 · Sigma 18-35mm · 28mm · f/9 · 1/60 sec · ISO 100

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Frame 42 of 82

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