Earlier this week I posted Death Valley–Day 5: Joshua Trees. In it I stated that this week was a twofer. This is the second half of the Day 5 selects; they are from a trip out to the Racetrack Playa.
In the past I had seen pictures of the moving rocks of the Racetrack on several photography forums and have always been intrigued by them. So when I started doing research for this trip, going to the Racetrack Playa was given a high priority. The next to last day we made the long trip out to the playa.
Did I say, “long trip?” That doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s 25 miles of washboard road. It took us over 2.5 hours, each way. I had heard about how bad the road was (many flat tires from the sharp rocks) but had no idea of how miserable of a trip it would be. We had planned the trip so we would be there for sunset so we would have some low light to accentuate the tracks. Because the trip took a lot longer than anticipated I’m very glad we started out early. The good news is we were blessed with some wonderful light while we were there.
In this image I was trying to capture the trail so that it made a S-curve up through the image.Here is the shooting metadata for this image:
D200 with 12-24 @ 24mm
1/60 sec @ f/11 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +2/3
In this image I was trying to show the moving rock in it’s environment. Shooting wider and from a lower camera position to include the mountains in the background. Here is the shooting metadata for this image:
D200 with 12-24 @ 12mm
1/50 sec @ f/11 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +2/3
2Stop GND
Before I knew it, an hour and a half had passed and the sun was dropping behind the mountains to the west (Last Change Range) putting the rocks and their trails in shade. But up at the northern end of the playa there was a rock island that was still being lit by the setting sun. I had noticed the island on the way in and thought it was pretty cool looking. But now with this light…
When I got home I discovered that is rock formation has a name. It’s appropriately named, the Grandstand. Here I’m trying to show the Grandstand in its environment. I framed this with a small stone in foreground to break up all the cracked mud. The shooting metadata for this image is:
D200 with 12-24 @ 15mm
1/90 sec @ f/11 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp -1/3
And as the sun continued to set the Grandstand was soon in shade. Just before the sun drop behide the mountains the moon began rising in the east. (We were three days away from the full moon.)
Here is the shooting metadata for Moon rise over the Racetrack Playa:
D200 with 24-70 @ 46mm
1/60 sec @ f/8 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp -1
While there we saw evidence that some folks have been messing with the rocks. There were trails with no rocks. There were trails with two rocks; one at the end and one at the beginning. Even one case where someone had obviously racked a rock over the dried mud to “create” a fake tail. If you visit this location please be respectfull of it. These trail take years to form.
I’ve included this picture of the Racetrack Playa from space to give you a sense of what the place is like. It lays between two mountain ranges and is a flat dry lake bed that is, roughly, 1 mile wide by 3 miles long. The moving rocks can be found with more frequency at the southern end (bottom of the picture). And the Grandstand is that black dot in the upper left portion of the playa.
(I found this picture on Wikipedia. There they stated the image is in the public domain. Assuming they are correct, there are no copyright issues with using this picture, that I did not take.)