358 Adventures in Scenery 



Amargosa Hotel invites the traveler to tarry for rest and re- 

 freshment, and after the toilsome journey at least water and 

 gasoline will be needed! To the west is the Amargosa Range, 

 locally designated from north to south as Grapevine, Funeral, 

 and Black Mountains. Turning westward up a mountain 

 canyon, this is not "the highway paved with good intentions" 

 but a well-paved somewhat steep highway to Death Valley. 

 It is climb out of one fault-walled valley to another, up over 

 the Amargosa Range 6,000 feet above sea level, then down 

 below the level of the waves but not into the ocean, not yet 

 into the "bottomless pit," but onto the sunken floor of what the 

 geologist calls a "graben" (a sunken valley between fault 

 walls) . In this case it is a "graben" which is the catchment 

 floor for the waters of a nearly rainless region, a basin of con- 

 centrated salt brine, an almost impassable bottom of salt; this 

 is Death Valley where it has been said the birds fall dead trying 

 to fly across. But be not disturbed. The air is fine, and while 

 the floor of the sunken Valley is said to be almost impassable 

 and is, off the highway yet the roads are fine. The scenery is 

 incomparable. If you go to Bad Water, 17 miles south of 

 Furnace Creek Inn (and you certainly will want to) you will 

 be farther below sea level than you have ever been before 

 (unless you have been shipwrecked at sea) , 296 feet minus. 

 And to get out it will be necessary to climb and there is no 

 rope ladder! Telescope Peak, up over your head at 11,045 feet 

 above sea level, is at the top of what is said to be the greatest 

 abrupt rise from base to tip in the United States. Here is where 

 you add to find the difference 11,045 feet above sea level plus 

 296 feet below sea level equals the difference between where 

 you stand and what you look at on the crest of Telescope Peak, 

 horizontally about 1 2 miles from the floor of the Valley. 



Borax Mines, Furnace Creek Camp, 

 and Mount Whitney 



After leaving Death Valley Junction it is 30 miles across the 



