Eroded Terrain Near Natural Bridge Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California. March 27, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Rugged and eroded terrain near the entrance to Natural Bridge Canyon in morning light at Death Valley National Park, California.
Natural Bridge Canyon is located at the foot of the Amargosa Range Black Hills just a short distance north of the popular Badwater area. As is typical of many of the canyon entrances in Death Valley, the approach is by leaving the main road paralleling the edge of the Valley and driving up a large alluvial fan on a gravel road towards the hills. The road ends and the canyon quickly narrows.
This photograph was made along this gravel approach road and shows a bit of the fan in the foreground, the cliffs alongside the was in the middle distance, and beyond that the convoluted and colorful strata of the lower section of the mountain range, here with low-angle back light from the morning sun coming from the other side of the mountains. This photograph also shows something that I found remarkable on this visit, namely the incredible profusion of plant life that was coming to live in the wake of some unusually heavy rain fall earlier in the season. During normal years and during most of the year even in wet years you’ll see almost no green at all on terrain like this aside from a few small and isolated bushes. But on this late-March visit there was plant life springing up everywhere. When I looked closely I could find a fringe of green almost everywhere. Here, not only is there obvious growth in the gravel of the wash at the bottom of the frame, but there is a fringe of green along the edges of the cliff and even in the far distance on the higher slopes.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
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Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 73mm
ISO 200, f/13, 1/40 second
keywords: death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, scenic, travel, nature, desert, rugged, erosion, eroded, mountains, hill, cliff, gully, wash, pink, strata, layer, green, plant, growth, spring, rock, morning, light, natural, bridge, canyon, landscape, nature, stock, plants, rock, gravel, red, black, amargosa
Richard:
Thanks for the comment. Isn’t that an amazing bit of geology? The sense of very old and very massive hills certainly got my attention, especially with the light slanting down across the hills in the early morning.
I’ve been past this spot a number of times also, but had never bothered to stop. My excuse is that I assumed that since there are more famous “natural bridges” in other places that this one must not be all that great. But I had a bit of extra time on this morning, and I had also made a decision to try to visit a few new spots on this trip – so I drove the short spur road to the trailhead. (The location is just north of the popular Badwater stop and parking lot.)
The canyon itself is quite interesting with very steep walls that are quite tall in some places, and after a short walk you arrive at the bulky and rugged arch. This is not delicate arch! It is a massive and block thing – quite different from what I was expecting.
Dan
Dan:
This is great. I don’t think that I made it to this part of DV when I visited. I like the way you stacked the receeding lines of rock above the foreground hills with the sloping land in the near foreground. Cool shot!