/// Wild Tracks - Landscape Photography by Eduardo Gallo

WILD TRACKS

Passion for Landscape Photography

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Death Valley National Park, CA, USA

December 2013

Death Valley National Park, CA, USA

Canon 5D MkII & EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, 1/30s f/11 ISO400 @35mm

Google Earth for this photo
SOLITUDE

The Northern Mojave lies within the Basin and Range region, characterized by a series of parallel mountain ranges separated by wide flat valleys. Some of these valleys contain lakebeds at their lowest points, which only fill up for short periods of time with a few inches of water after heavy rains. One of the most famous ones is known as The Racetrack because its dry surface often contains tire sized tracks etched up by skidding boulders. How these boulders, some weighting several hundred pounds, move along the lake is the source of several theories, none proven to date. When the boulder tracks are parallel, they look as if the rocks had been racing each other across the lakebed surface, hence its name.

Given the effort required to get there, and the fact that by December 2013 California had endured several consecutive years of drought, I was somewhat surprised (and disappointed) to find out that most of the lakebed was humid, and the lowest part, precisely the area where the tracks are usually found (for no other reason that it borders an unstable cliff from where boulders fall once in a while), was flooded. On top of that, the sky was completely clouded, so the day did not look very promising from a photographic perspective.

In any case, I hiked around the shore to reach the cliffs where the tracks were supposed to be located. And there were indeed several hundred rocks of various sizes spread around an area of approximately one square mile, too far from the cliff to get there by gravity alone. There were probably many more rocks that I could not see below the ice, as the area very close to the cliff was not only flooded but also frozen. Well done, Eduardo. You have reached one of the most remote places of the Mojave Desert only to see a bunch of rocks sputtering out of the ice. So I took a few pictures and started coming back.

Fifteen minutes later, about a mile from the rocks, the sun somehow found an opening in the clouds, and flooded the lake with an astonishing warm light. I knew it was not going to last and it did not. No time to look for a better location, no time to think. Just take photos. Right then, right there. Attach the camera to the tripod and shoot. Turn and shoot again. Move a few feet and repeat the process. Shoot, shoot, shoot again. Lower the tripod to get a different perspective and shoot. Get closer to the water and shoot. Find anything to fill up the foreground and shoot. Wonderful place this racetrack. No tracks, no races, no vegetation, no noise, no people, no nothing. Just the light, the lake, the solitude, my camera, and myself.

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