Titus Canyon/White(Volcanic) Pass
GF2a. Location/Access:(36o 49.609’N; 117o 00.041’W) The turnoff to begin the 26-mile, one-way road through Titus Canyon is 13.2 miles northeast of the junction of the Beatty Cut-Off Road and the Mud Canyon Road. This is a total of 23.2 miles from CA 190 if coming from Furnace Creek and only 5.8 miles from Beatty, Nevada. After making the turn, it is an additional 9.5 miles to a parking area at the summit of White Pass (also called Volcanic Pass).
Best Time: Morning, all year.
Geology: En-route, you have driven over alluvial fan deposits of Quaternary age and once you entered the wash and low hills, you were traveling through Neogene volcanic rocks. At this point, a large outcrop of this volcanic rock, including volcanic plugs and ash and breccia deposits are directly north of you. Neogene bimodal volcanism is very common in the Death Valley region. In the distance, looking down the road ahead of you, Cambrian sediments, mostly shale and limestone, form the distant ridges on the left. In the right, in the distance are dipping sedimentary rocks, mostly the Titus Canyon formation composed of shale, sandstone and conglomerate deposited in a continental environment, probably a lake during the Oligocene epoch.
