Badwater Basin

Badwater Basin is the bottom of the continent: a salt pan in Death Valley lying 86 metres (282 feet) below sea level, the lowest point in North America. The scale of the place only becomes clear when you look up. High on the cliffs of the Black Mountains above the parking area, a small sign marks where sea level would be, absurdly far overhead; across the valley to the west, the Panamint Range climbs to Telescope Peak at 3,368 metres, so that the eye takes in a vertical span of more than three kilometres in a single glance.

The name comes from a small spring-fed pool beside the road. The story goes that an early surveyor's mule refused to drink from it, and the map-makers labelled the spot "bad water"; the water is extremely salty but not poisonous, and it supports pickleweed, aquatic insects and the tiny Badwater snail. Beyond the pool the white floor of the valley stretches away for kilometres. The salt, mostly ordinary sodium chloride mixed with calcite, gypsum and borax, is left behind as groundwater seeps upward and evaporates, and the crust is anything from a few centimetres to more than a metre and a half thick.

Walk past the first trampled stretch near the boardwalk and the surface changes. Out on the open flat the crust breaks into a pattern of polygons, many of them roughly hexagonal, their raised edges built up as mineral-laden groundwater rises through the crust and the salt crystallises. In the low light of early morning or late afternoon the ridges throw long shadows and the whole floor turns into a vast honeycomb, tinted pink and gold by the sky. After heavy rain a shallow sheet of water can cover part of the basin, a faint echo of Lake Manly, the Ice Age lake that once filled this valley to a depth of some 180 metres, and the mountains appear reflected in it upside down.

Getting there

Badwater lies on Badwater Road in Death Valley National Park, about 27 km (17 miles) south of Furnace Creek. The nearest town of any size is Pahrump, Nevada, about 76 km away, and the nearest major airport is Harry Reid International in Las Vegas (LAS), roughly 150 km away, a drive of a few hours. A paved car park and a ramp lead down to a boardwalk; from there an easy walk of about 1.6 km round trip reaches the edge of the salt flat, and a longer walk leads out onto the polygons. In summer the heat is extreme, so go out early in the morning.