Week 7: Death Valley Travel Journal

In my visit to the gorgeous geographical marvel of Death Valley, my first stop was to Titus Canyon, where we found a section of the Grapevine Mountains where there lies a narrow gorge. It was mentioned that the rocks seen in the picture below is limestone that is over half a billion years old, yet the mountain range itself was pretty recent. To that end, I would like to obtain a topographic map of the area around Titus Canyon, and see which faults or tectonic plates might have caused the uplifting of the mountain range.

Titus Canyon (Photo courtesy of Marli Miller)

The next stop in my visit was to the beautiful Artist's Drive, which contains a curvy, roller-coaster like one-way through the multicolored formation that makes up the face of the Black Mountains. While the colors of the rocks range from pink, purple, red, green, brown, and black made for a surreal landscape, perhaps even more striking is the folding and layering of the area, seemingly crafted by flash floods and erosion. My question would be regarding the colors of the rock, and what caused such varying of color in the rocks and sediment that are so close to each other, and which degrees of "chemical weathering and hydrothermal altercation" could result in which colors. Also, is this colorization unique to this area, or are there other sections of Death Valley (or elsewhere) where a similar color palette exists? 

Artist's Drive (Photo courtesy of Tom Bean)

The final stop in my journey was the majestic Death Valley Dunes, which are surrounded on all sides by mountains. Consisting of tiny grains of quartz and feldspar, it was fascinating to learn of the formation of the dunes, starting from the tops of mountains as large chucks of rock that eventually find themselves as tiny grains of sand in the dunes, and how the winds play a major part in the formation of the smooth ripples that we see. I would be interested to learn what kinds of winds create the different types of dunes that we see, and if different wind strengths and/or directions affect what that section of the dunes looks like. Further, it fascinates me that this area is surrounded by mountain ranges - are the formations of those mountains unique enough that allow the dunes to exist, or if one of those formations had developed differently, would this area consist of something else?

Death Valley Dunes (Photo courtesy of NPS Archives)

References:

Artist's Drive. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/deva/ftart1.html
Death Valley Dunes. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/deva/ftdune1.html
Titus Canyon. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/deva/fttit1.html