On Saturday we
examined the Pliocene (5.3 to 1.8 million years ago) Furnace Creek Formation
down the road from the ranch. It’s composed of sandstones, mudstones,
conglomerates (that’s a fine grained rock with larger grains within it that
have been cemented together), breccias (that’s a fine grained rock with larger
fragments of minerals and grains within it that have been cemented together)
and basaltic lava flows. The units were deposited in a deep lake setting, which
we worked out from the presence of ripple marks in some of the beds, and a few
of them had been faulted during the deformation in Death Valley.
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| Furnace Creek Formation |
At 12:10pm
we went to Zabriskie Point, Gower Gulch and the western end of Echo Canyon Wash
to look at some cool views and discuss some of the deformation that occurred in
Death Valley.
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| Zabriskie Point |
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| Zabriskie Point |
We also briefly discussed deformation on the Black Mountain Fault
near Furnace Creek Inn, before setting off to the Valley of Fire campsite where
we stayed for the night, which we got to at 5pm. This was an interesting night
as the toilets were a hole in ground and wind ripped through the valley for
most of the night! We did have a lovely time chatting around the campfire
beforehand though.
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| Valley of Fire |
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| Campfire |
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