Lowest Point in North America at 282 Feet Below Sea Level – Badwater, Death Valley National Park, California

We woke up early that morning and prepared for our hike to the lowest elevation point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, Badwater Basin! Dad and Andy had studied the maps and did as much research as humanly possible to figure out where this exact spot was. As you will read below, the exact spot of 282 feet below sea level is not obvious, and you need to have either a map and/or a GPS to locate it.

Dad and Andy mapping it out

The trek not only gave us a workout, but we got a bit of an introduction (for my father, a refresher) in geo-referencing. From what I understand, there are four main formats in which to determine the location of something.  First is degrees/minutes/seconds, which is where degrees are divided into 60 minutes, and minutes are divided into 60 seconds. For example, Fairbanks is 64° 50′ 15″ N 147° 43′ 08″ W. Second is degrees and decimal minutes where degrees are given as integers but minutes are given with decimal fractions. For example, Fairbanks is 64° 50.24′ N 147° 43.13′ W. Third is decimal degrees which is the standard for Geographic Information Systems. For example, Fairbanks is 64.84° N, 147.72° W. Fourth is Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) which are coordinates indicated by a zone and grid system based on a cylindrical projection of the Earth’s surface. For example, Fairbanks is Zone 6, Easting: 465898, Northing: 7190521. Thanks to this website for helping lay it out for me!

After doing some math and map studying, we determined the following locations for the lowest point (which is not the liar of a sign you will see below):

There are many conversion tools online such as this one and this one. However, heading out into the middle of the desert is never a good idea if you do not understand maps, GPS coordinates, and are not prepared for the trek. Do your homework!

Badwater Basin is technically a salt pan, which is essentially a pan of salt. Salt pans mainly exist in deserts and form when the climate has a higher rate of water evaporation than precipitation. In an area like Death Valley, where the average rain fall is about 2.36 inches a year, it is not surprising that salt flats form all over the area. The area becomes saturated with salt and other minerals because the water that does fall is unable to drain into the ground and just sits on the surface of the earth until evaporated. It creates these large, fragile slabs of salt that cave under your feet as you walk across them.

As I illustrated above, Badwater Basin is famous for boasting the lowest elevation point at 282 feet below sea level. It is (surprisingly), however, not the largest salt pan. Devil’s Golf Course in Death Valley is the largest salt pan in the United States.

Heading out to Badwater Basin, we all felt like we knew something that no one else knew. The Badwater Basin sign (below), is not, I repeat not, the lowest elevation point in North America. The sign does not sit at 282 feet below sea level; it sits at about 280 feet below sea level. The actual lowest point is about 3 miles beyond this sign.

The landscape, as repetitive and unrelenting as it was was actually quite interesting. The terrain was so unique, and it took a lot of strength and energy to hike through such a dry area with no shade. We drank a ton of water and loaded up on the sunscreen. The salt pan began essentially like it looks like in the above picture. It was a brownish color with large broken up sections. It almost looked like a series of mini earthquakes had hit the area and created a bunch of fault lines and cracks. The landscape looked like this for about a mile and a half and eventually turned into more manageable terrain with a clearly higher level of salt deposits. The ground was bright white and didn’t crack as much under our weight. The bottoms of our boots were caked with salt; it looked like we had been hiking through snow.

Eventually Dad announced that he “thought” they had found it. We all just sort of stood there and looked around. We figured there had to be some kind of marker or indication. Andy thought maybe there would be a USGS marker like at the high peaks. We didn’t see anything different, although the GPS seemed to indicate we were close.

Dad searching around

Dad and Andy put down their backpacks and started slowly walking opposite directions. Dad went to the left with the GPS, taking slow, methodical steps backward, watching the notations on the GPS click away. Andy went to the right. Finally we heard Dad shout “here it is!” He had literally backed into it. This was what we saw:

We weren’t treated to a fancy USGS sign or placard, but we knew we had found it. And we also felt comfort that some other crazy adventurer had made the trek out there to find it too. The side of the rocks had a long stick pushed into the ground, and wedged in between the rocks appeared to be bright blue mylar. We concluded that at some point someone had put a balloon next to the rocks so the sun would shine off the bright color. Eventually the balloon deflated and someone had placed the mylar among the rocks. Beneath the rocks was a stone that read “-282.”

The hike back was incredibly tedious. By that point we saw what we had come to see, and yet we had to get back – 3 miles back across terrain that, like I said above, made 3 miles feel like 10. By that point too our legs ached so bad and we were all so hot and running low on water, the trek back was even more taxing than the trek there! But, it was still beautiful and we enjoyed the landscape and beautiful skies and scenery on the way back.

By the time we got back to the car I was on the verge of a meltdown. I was so tired and my knees hurt from sinking into the fragile and thin layers of salt on the walk back. It was also incredibly hot and I was sunburnt. We discussed simply returning to the campsite, but Mom and I wore down Dad and Andy and convinced them to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Furnace Creek Ranch swimming pool.

I will blog about Furnace Creek Ranch in a later blog, but the pool has always been one of my favorite parts of the Ranch, especially when I was a kid. The pools are unique in that they are spring fed. It appears as if they recently re-did the bathrooms as well. While the bathrooms were nice, there were only two showers in the women’s bathroom, which as any woman could guess, was not enough. There was a huge line, and the women’s bathroom could have used three times as many showers. Women were polite and didn’t shower long, but it was still quite a wait.

The pool was beautiful, with a black iron gate around it, plenty of chairs and chaise lounges, and even a side area with fire pits and gazebos with nicer seating surrounded by beautiful grass. They had really done a nice job updating the area and modernizing the decor since the last time I had seen it. We swam for about an hour; the cool pool was nice and relaxing.

 The shower felt nice after the dip in the pool. We gathered our things and headed back to the car. We drove back to the campsite where Dad had a fantastic dinner of chicken apple sausage and potatoes. We ate our fill, drank some wine, and retired to bed. Tomorrow we were off to new adventures!