Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park’s barren, desert landscape sprawls over 3.3 million acres. The valley with its surrounding mountains and basins are where the Earth’s geological bones are laid bare for all to see. It is a place of extremes; air temperatures reach in excess of 120 degrees F, and ground temperatures have been recorded as high at 190 degrees F. The scant rain fall of less than two inches per year make for an arid world. In this world of stark contrasts, professional photographers Fred and Randi Hirschmann capture this stupendous desert scenery. Looking over a pool at Badwater, 279 feet below sea level, Telescope Peak is reflected in the pool as the mountain towers in the dry air, its peak reaching 1,049 feet above sea level. Boulders leave trails in the dry lake beds as they move across the windswept landscape, and a delicate flower blooms from a crack in the clay of a dry pond. Author Mark Schlenz writes an environmental history about this valley and the impacts of humans on its fragile desert ecosystems.