Aguereberry Point, Death Valley NP, California

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Starting from the nearby point above the camera and going left, Telescope Peak is just visible over a nearer part of the crest of the Panamint Range. Then the dipping layered sediments of the late Precambrian and early Cambrian are prominent in the foreground with Death Valley between the Panamints and the Black Mountains. In the far distance down Death Valley are the Avawatz Mountains on the skyline and the eastern Owlshead Mountains somewhat closer. On the skyline beyond the northern end of the Black Mountains and the southern end of the Funeral Mountains are the Spring Mountains (Mt. Charleston being the high point). The drainage between the Blacks and Funerals is Furnace Creek, which enters Death Valley farther left at the park headquarters and major hub of the park in the green patch of Furnace Creek. Farther left on the skyline are the high plateaus of the Nevada Test Site, including Pahute Mesa. Farther left the Grapevine Mountains define the east side of northern Death Valley before being obscured by nearby Tucki Mountain. Farther left are the Cottonwood Mountains and Hunter Mountain and left of the nearby student, peaks of the Sierra Nevada rise beyond the Harrisburg Flat area and Pinto Peak before we turn back to Aguereberry Point once more.

A lot of geology. The roughly homoclinal section has Wood Canyon Frm at the base, the distinctive white band of the Zabriskie Quartzite, the brownish-green Carrara Formation and then the thick carbonates of the Cambrian Bonanza King Formation. The main active strands of the Death Valley Fault Zone are near the base of the Black Mounatains until the far part of the valley to the south, where the fault becomes dominantly strike-slip and moves into the middle of the valley. The visible Black Mountains are cored with Precambrian gneisses and Miocene plutonic rocks and capped with Miocene volcanics. Furnace Creek Wash is nearly aligned with the Texas Springs syncline, which folds rocks as young as Pleistocene around a SE-NW trending axis suggesting shortening between the Blacks and Funeral Mountains. To the north, the east-dipping section visible to the right of Tucki Mountain sits on a barely visible fault that nearly parallels the wash at the base of the cliff; this fault has been interpreted to be one of the major detachment faults in the region. Tucki Mountain itself resembles a core complex as its crystalline rock sits under low-angle detachments on all sides.