One Mans Blog
Specialization is for Insects.
Posted on Sep 06, 2007 - 1:36am by John P. in Environment, Travel, Videos
Deep in the heart of the California desert lies one of the natural world’s most puzzling mysteries: the moving rocks of Death Valley.
These are not ordinary moving rocks that tumble down mountainsides in avalanches, are carried along riverbeds by flowing water, or are tossed aside by animals.
These rocks, some as heavy as 700 pounds, are inexplicably transported across a virtually flat desert plain, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long.
They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no one has ever seen them move.
Until now that is!
Racetrack Playa is the seasonally dry lake (a playa) located in the northern part of the Panamint Mountains in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.A. that is famous for ‘sailing stones‘.
One cold winter morning, when the snowmelt covered the playa, the solution to the puzzle was finally caught on film.
That kick ass photo above is by MeLastMohican. I have no idea what his real name is, but he
Tags: California, Death-Valley, Desert, Environment, Mystery, Travel, Videos
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That really is a trip … it does make me a little sad, though, that I didn’t go down to Black Rock City this year for the Burning Man festival. Man dad is a geophysicist and he really enjoys the ‘racing rocks’ phenomenon because geological time is usually so slow!
Wow.. it’s odd that it washes over some rocks, completely ignoring them. I guess it’s a matter of which area of water is the most dense. Forwarding this one to a few friends
MG, all bodies of water and sections of those bodies of water will have the same density…I think it would depend on current or the size of the rocks, possibly how deep they are embedded?
It is also interesting to note that the crinkled surface of the mud remains relatively unchanged. I am guessing that the mud is frozen or baked hard so that the water flow doesn’t change it but a rock dragging across the surface would. Without that video, one would have to assume some hippies from Burning Mans wondered over in the night and did the rearranging.