Racetrack Lead Ponies & Outriders
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Racetrack Playa , a mostly dry lake off the beaten track in Death Valley.
About the "migration" of stones there are some different explanations. However, so far no one has been able to observe.
After all, the phenomenon of the wandering stones does not seem to be so rare. In California alone, it should give them to 16 points.
Shot shortly after sunrise (march,29, 2011, 7:32 am)
Racetrack Playa, ein meist ausgetrockneter See abseits der üblichen Routen im Death Valley.
Über die "Wanderung" der Steine gibt es einige, verschiedene Erklärungsversuche. Bislang hat es jedoch noch niemand beobachten können.
Immerhin scheint das Phänomen der wandernden Steine nicht so selten zu sein. Allein in Kalifornien soll es sie an 16 Stellen geben.
Aufnahme kurz nach Sonnenaufgang, 29.03.2011, 7:32 Uhr
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Death Valley National Park
California
From the 2020 Archives
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© Melissa Post 2022
After a long bone rattling drive down a 27 mile dirt road. We finally arrived at the Racetrack in Death Valley. This is the "Grandstand" located out on the flat of the Playa. This is a 14 image panorama that ended up just under 60 megapixels and I had to scale it down to 30% of it's original size just to get it to upload. During the scaling process the image softened up a bit, proving that there is such thing as too much of a good thing. One things for sure, I won't have any problems with large print files. It occurred to me while trying to post this shot, that if you only had a ten megapixel camera and you find on awesome composition, you could shoot a square pano and end up with a much more printable file than shooting just one frame. Believe it or not, Wayne and I lit this whole scene using two light panels.
Hot Tip of the Day:
If you have to make an edit to an image, do it while in Lightroom, because if you open the jpeg and edit and save it again, it will lose some detail. Then save it again and save it again the fourth or fifth save which has recompressed it over and over again the image will be destroyed. And just saving a jpeg a second time renders it unusable IMHO. Go ahead, try it and watch the destruction begin. That's why every image I upload is saved as a tiff file and usually weighs in at just over 100 megabytes. I do this just in case I want or need to edit the final uploaded image I can do so without altering the quality of the image. Just thought you all should know that. :)
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From Death Valley National Park's "Racetrack." See it larger here:
www.ewertnaturephotography.com/Landscape-and-Nature-1/New...
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!
Edit: as I understand it, these rocks slide across the desert floor during or after rainstorms when the ground is soft and wet. Extremely high winds and gravity create this phenomenon.
The rocks of the Racetrack Playa are composed of dolomite and syenite, the same materials that make up the surrounding mountains. They tumble down due to the forces of erosion, coming to rest on the parched ground below. Once they reach the level surface of the playa, the rocks somehow move horizontally, leaving perfect tracks behind them to record their path.
Many of the largest rocks have left behind trails as long as 1,500 feet, suggesting that they've moved a long way from their original location. Rocks with a rough-bottomed surface leave straight tracks, while smooth-bottomed rocks tend to wander. The sailing stones have been observed and studied since the early 1900s.
In 2014, scientists were able to capture the movement of the stones for the first time using time-lapse photography. The results strongly suggest that the sailing stones are the result of a perfect balance of ice, water, and wind. In the winter of 2014, rain formed a small pond that froze overnight and thawed the next day, creating a vast sheet of ice that was reduced by midday to only a few millimeters thick. Driven by a light wind, this sheet broke up and accumulated behind the stones, slowly pushing them forward.
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© Melissa Post 2020
Looking south from the Grandstand area of The Racetrack.
The Racetrack is a dry lakebed formed roughly 10,000 years ago when the climate changed from wet/dry periods to mostly dry. The fine sediment is the result of erosion from the Cottonwood Mountains on the east and the Nelson Range to the west. The accumulated playa is approximately 1,000' thick, running north to south. The grade change is only about 1.5 inches higher at the north end of the playa than the southern end, a distance of roughly 3 miles. The width of the Racetrack varies from 1.75 to 2 miles wide.
It's called the Racetrack for a reason I suppose. A few years ago now, ECXCBTM0-60B raced an outbound Metra coming in for a stop at Highlands. When I lived in La Grange, Highlands was one of my favorite spots to take in the afternoon rush. On this beautiful and warm spring afternoon, a visiting DanK and I were lucky enough to actually see a race.
The Racetrack Playa, or The Racetrack, is a scenic dry lake feature with "sailing stones" that inscribe linear "racetrack" imprints. Nestled in a remote valley between the Cottonwood and Last Chance Ranges, the Racetrack is a place of stunning beauty and mystery. The Racetrack is a playa--a dry lakebed--best known for its strange moving rocks. The Racetrack is a playa (dry lakebed) about 3 miles long and 2 miles wide. At least 10,000 years ago this region underwent climatic changes resulting in cycles of hot, cold and wet periods. As the climate changed, the lake evaporated and left behind beige colored mud, at least 1,000 feet thick.
When we first arrived at the Racetrack Playa there were a few groups of people enjoying the playa flying kites and taking pictures. I suspect they were thrilled about having survived 26 miles of bone shaking on the Racetrack Road and gathering courage for the return trip!
DEATH VALLEY CALIFORNIA
The moving rocks in this remote area were a mystery until 2013 when scientific monitoring of the rocks discovered how they moved across the playa leaving a distinct trail. With sufficient rain, the southern end of the playa becomes a shallow lake. In winter, the surface of the lake freezes into a floating sheet of ice enclosing the rocks. When the ice sheets break apart, a steady strong wind catches the floating ice sheets pushing them along with the embedded rocks leaving their marks in the soft playa. The rocks are now at a new location until the next similar event which may take several more years.
Most likely the trail left by the larvae of an Aspen Leaf Miner Moth (Phyllocnistis populiella)
Smile on Saturday - One Single Leaf
It's a snowy New Year's Day evening as pair of CN SD75Is on symbol M337 pull out of Hawthorne Yard for headroom, at Lavergne where the Freeport Sub crosses above BNSF's Chicago Sub "Racetrack".
We drove up on the mountain side to get a look of the Racetrack Playa after leaving it. This playa is located in a very remote location of the Death Valley in California. To reach it, you drive almost two hours on a terrible dirt road. It's worth while though with the moving rocks on the playa.
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This was another take on the crazy wild trip to the Racetrack with my homeboys Jave and
James. We all came back with some nice images on this night, check out Jave's image and then when you get done picking your jaw off the floor, check out Jame's shot. You'll probably need to slap your self a couple times, once you get done looking at these images. Talking about sensory overload!
The Racetrack, also known as the Racetrack Playa is a scenic dry lake feature with "sailing stones" that inscribe linear "racetrack" imprints. The Grandstand is to the left.
During periods of heavy rain, water washes down from the Racetrack mountain area, drains into the playa, forms a shallow, short-lived endorheic lake. Under the hot desert sun, the thin veneer of water quickly evaporates leaving behind a surface layer of soft slick mud. As the mud dries, it shrinks and cracks into a mosaic pattern of interlocking polygons.
The mystery of the "sailing stones" will be revealed in my next post.
Happy Wednesday! Thanks for stopping by and for all of your kind comments, awards and faves -- I appreciate them all.
© Melissa Post 2020
Hot on the tail of a westbound intermodal train, BNSF 8855 leads a Westbound crude oil train through La Grange, IL
My old racetrack with cars to pull up with a key.
The part is about 60 years old and hangs as a picture on my wall.
Every Indy team station has three of these fire extinguishers perched on the cement barrier, in anticipation of track action.
But the skies look a little foreboding.
I am up at 5 AM and back to my volunteer position in the credentials area. Every so often, I take a break and walk the grounds to shoot images. Tomorrow, the racing actions starts. Yippee.
~~Sheree~~
Nestled in a remote valley between the Cottonwood and Last Chance Ranges, the Racetrack is a place of stunning beauty and mystery. The Racetrack is a playa--a dry lakebed--best known for its strange moving rocks. At least 10,000 years ago this region underwent climatic changes resulting in cycles of hot, cold and wet periods. As the climate changed, the lake evaporated and left behind beige colored mud, at least 1,000 feet thick.
The large island outcrop of quartz monzonite near the front of the playa is known as the Grandstand. The wash leading to the Grandstand is not the road, which is rougher.
Happy Tuesday! Thanks for stopping by and for all of your kind comments, awards and faves -- I appreciate them all.
© Melissa Post 2020
Tardiness has become more the norm than the exception for FEC train 109 lately, with this one pulling into Hialeah Yard late on a Thursday afternoon. To put the icing on the cake, the three EMD lashup whereas EMD power occasionally seeps into the 109-210 pair. The overpass in the background is a walkway from the Metrorail station to the Hialeah Racetrack, a signature radio location on the FEC channels. "Racetrack single track in" is a common call over the radio for trains like this. To the left of frame, the east leg of the old wye that spun dedicated passenger trains going to the track. It served Gilda and two lumber customers until the last decade where it now sits rusted awaiting its fate.
Abandoned racetrack. Also perched on the front edge of the grandstand roof is the photo lab--you know, photo finish. All that remains of the gear are a couple of empty plastic chemistry bottles, one labeled "Paper Fix," and this line with clothes pins for drying prints.
A pair of BN U28B's former Burlington units, are rolling an empty coal west at Berwyn IL. April 1973.
Taken from the same spot as my previous photo, the panorama of Saline Valley. The Racetrack is about 9.5 miles distant.
This photo has Flickr Notes.
Death Valley National Park
A night shot of a Sailing Stone at the Racetrack Playa Death Valley. Part of a time lapse for my Racetrack Video. I placed a LED lamp for illumination once the twilight set in.
To see the full Racetrack video on YouTube, google toxictabasco.
Or click the link: youtu.be/8QZQqgjRHuY
Thanks for viewing.
I lost count of how often I went to the so called Racetrack Playa located in the middle of Death Valley National Park. However, this time I chose a new route to access it. Instead of taking the ‘highway’ coming from Ubehebe Crater I thought it would be interesting to take the Lippincott Road over the Lippincott Pass. OH BOY, that was a crazy adventure which I most likely will not repeat! Everything went well, but I was sh****** my pants while driving up, upper and uppest and the trail was getting narrow, narrower and narrowest and steep, steeper and steepest. Once up at the pass there were six Jeeps lined up to get started to go down the same route I just came up. We were all most lucky that we met up at the pass and not some hundred meters below, because there is not wiggle room for any kind of passing, maneuvering, or turning around!
Once getting up to the ancient lake bed which makes the Racetrack the drive was forgotten as the famous sliding rocks and its trails were already waiting for us to show off. By the way, the mystery concerning what makes these rocks move is solved. Read here!
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