Sarah Cayea Upward Bound Geology Student
Alluvial Fans | Normal Faults | Bottle-Neck Valley |

Death Valley

Alluvial Fans

     Death Valley is world renown for its alluvial fans. Alluvial fans are wedge-shaped bodies of poorly-sorted sediment, and range in size. In the mountains surrounding Death Valley, melt water fills the cracks and other openings in the rocks and freezing and thawing shatters them. The shattered rock becomes the source for sediment pouring into the valley floor. Streams carry these boulders, pebbles, and sand grains down the canyons adjoining in Death Valley. When a mountain encounters a sharp reduction in slope (often at fault bounded mountains) and a widening of their valley, they drop their sediment loads as fan-shaped deposits. The largest fans in Death Valley are those along the east foot of the Panamint Range, which can measure between 5 and 6 miles long, with surfaces rising from below sea level to thousands of miles above sea level.

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Normal Faults

     Death Valley is a structural valley, which means it was not caused by erosion. The valley is caused by normal faulting - while the valley drops down, the mountains are pushed upward. The faulting in Death Valley can be compared to a loaf of bread: as the "loaf" falls over to the side, the individual slices (of rock) slide along the faults (spaces between slices). At the upper ridge are the mountains, and at the lower ridge are the valleys. The mountains bounding Death Valley are still young, and include the Panamint Range in the West, the Funeral Mountains, and the Black Mountains in the East. Death Valley. The movement that has formed Death Valley is still active even today.

Bottle-Neck Valley

Bottle-neck valleys are a result of active tectonics (neotectonics). During rapid uplift, streams cascade off of the mountain front, quickly cutting steep gorges that erode from the scarp into the uplifted block. Eventually, a mature drainage basin evolves, creating bowl shaped headwaters. The resulting valley is narrow at the lower end and widens upstream (like a bottle). While visiting Death Valley, the Upward Bound group hiked through Golden Canyon (shown above). The extreme heat (it was 110 degrees at one point during the day) made the 2 mile hike there and back seem like an eternity. After our hiking adventure, we continued our Death Valley research by driving to Badwater, where we hiked up an alluvial fan containing a fault scarp. Fault scarps are also caused by neotectonics. All 8 students (including myself) took measurements of the incline to determine it's age. This particular fault scarp was a young one; formed in 1942 at the time of an earthquake. Other highlights of the Death Valley experience are eating lunch by Artist's Palette, and sighting a chuckwalla; a large, pot-bellied lizard.

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This page last Updated Monday, May 20, 2002

This site was created by Sarah Cayea.

If you have any questions or comments please contact me at smc_7_2003@hotmail.com.