Every Trail Tells a Story
Racetrack Valley
Witness one of the strangest natural phenomena in the world.
Experience a surreal landscape: The Grandstand, cracked playa, circling rocks.
A true “adventure to get there” hike – flat tires optional.
The amazing sliding rocks scooting across Racetrack Valley may be the national park’s weirdest phenomena of all. Geologists have been unable to determine exactly how rocks migrate around the Racetrack.
An ancient lakebed, the Racetrack is a 2.5-mile-long, oval-shaped dry mud flat. A rock outcropping at the north end of the Racetrack is known as The Grandstand, a dramatic dark island of stone rising from a pale playa sea. It looks like the natural grandstand for a sporting event, which is fitting – because the rocks are the competitors in the slowest race on earth.
Rocks of various sizes (baseball to basketball, and in some cases boulder-sized) slide across the old lakebed leaving tracks in their wake. These tracks – straight, curved, zigzagging, looping – extend as much as 600 feet. Some appear to have changed lanes mid-race, others spun out in dramatic U-turns, and a few circled back as though unsure of the finish line.
Prospectors in the 19th century first noticed the sliding rocks, and scientists have been scratching their heads since the 1950s. Theories abound: wind pushing across a rain-slicked playa; thin sheets of ice acting as conveyor belts; some combination of mud, water, and storm gusts. Instruments have confirmed the rocks move, but here’s the kicker: no one had actually seen them in action until recent time-lapse cameras caught them creeping along, propelled by wind and ice. Still, the mystery – and the fun – remains.
The Racetrack experience isn’t just about rocks with wanderlust. The playa itself is mesmerizing. Its cracked mud surface stretches to the horizon, a giant canvas of baked earth. Stand at the Grandstand and you’ll feel as if you’re on the stage of a geologic amphitheater, with mountains as your audience. And then there’s Tea Kettle Junction, where travelers festoon the road sign with battered kettles scrawled with names and dates – a whimsical tradition in a very serious desert.
Getting here is half the adventure. Twenty-six bone-rattling miles of washboard road weed out the casual sightseers. Flat tires are practically a badge of honor, and by the time you roll into the Racetrack parking area, you’ll feel like you’ve earned your ticket to the oddest show in Death Valley.
Even if you’re not lucky enough to watch a rock in motion, wandering the playa and following the mysterious tracks is strangely satisfying. A hiker’s imagination fills in what nature hides, and that’s part of the allure.
From the Ubehebe Crater parking lot, continue south 20 miles on the washboard-surface, occasionally rough dirt Racetrack Valley Road (suitable for high-clearance vehicles equipped with light truck tires; standard passenger car tires are susceptible to flats on this road) to Tea Kettle Junction, colorfully decorated with teakettles. Bear right, and travel another 6 miles to The Grandstand on the left side of the road and 2 more miles to parking for the Racetrack.
Head due east across the old lakebed. Hiking straight across the valley is the quickest and most direct route to the rocks, though walking in other directions will also eventually deliver you to the rocks in due time.
A half-mile of hiking brings you to the first rock tracks. If you keep hiking toward the mountains on the far side of the lakebed you’ll encounter more and more rocks and accompanying tracks. (These mountains supply the sliding rocks.)
Wander at will among the rocks and return the way you came.