Part of it is also the size of the mountains on either side. Earth’s crust is simply thinner between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Partly it is the stretching of the Great Basin itself.

Why here? Why is this the lowest spot in all of North America? After all, the Amargosa Valley to the east is 2,600 feet above sea level and the Panamint Valley to the west is at 2,000 feet. Yet the vertical rise of Denali still dwarfs them both with its 18,000-foot rise from the tundra near the McKinley River to its 20,310 feet above sea level height. Yes, at 29,029 feet above sea level, Everest is the highest mountain on earth, but it rises from a base already at 17,000 feet. This vertical rise rivals Mount Everest at 12,000 feet. Combined with the negative elevation of Badwater Basin, we were gazing at a vertical rise of 11,325 feet. In the distance, Telescope Peak rose, the highest point in the Panamints and in the National Park. The sensation that it was ice was just that powerful. All three of us began to walk more carefully as if it were slippery. To three native Michiganders, it felt and looked for all the world as if we were walking on ice. The boardwalk protected hyper-salinated Badwater Spring, adjacent to the parking area and the fantastic miniature formations of mud and salt that surrounded it. A steady stream of sightseers set out from the parking lot onto a short board walk and then out across the mud and salt flats. In many ways, this was Death Valley’s version of Yosemite’s Tunnel View, by far the most populated point we’d encountered in the Park.

It indicated the elevation of sea level, almost three hundred feet above us. Sean, Andrew, and I arrived at Badwater Basin in the early afternoon of February 27 as we continued north through Death Valley.Ĭlimbing out of the Jeep, one of the first things we noticed was a huge sign up on the cliffs above the parking lot. But the lake slowly dried up after the last Ice Age, leaving a bed of salt replenished by salts and minerals carried by water trapped here before evaporating. Once, Death Valley was filled by Lake Manley, eighty miles long and six-hundred feet deep. Runoff from the eastern side of the Panamint Range and the western side of the Amargosa Range also ends up here. With nowhere lower to go, the Amargosa River ends its one-hundred eighty-five-mile journey here. The basin is covered in a crust of salt, ninety-five percent of which is table salt (sodium chloride). Badwater Basin in Death Valley is 282 feet below sea level, making it the lowest point on North America and among the lowest on the planet.

Badwater basin salt flats