Cottonwood Mountains (CM)

Sites CM1-7 offer some of the most unusual and visually rewarding locations within Death Valley National Park. Site CM1 is easily accessible by paved road but Sites CM2-6 are some of the most remote that are described in this guide. A high clearance vehicle is always required to get to these three sites and often four-wheel-drive is needed. Sometimes Sites CM3 and 4 are inaccessible due to snow. As these sites are about 30 miles from the nearest paved road, extra precautions should be taken.

CM1. Ubehebe Crater

Ubehebe Crater is the largest of several maar craters in the immediate area. A small quantity of basaltic magma encountered underground water producing a ...

CM2. Racetrack Playa

The Racetrack Playa is one of the most enigmatic geologic features in the world. Rocks slide across the playa surface and leave ...

CM3. White Cap Mountain

En route to the summit you will pass through Ordovician, Devonian and Mississippian age sedimentary rocks, mostly shale and limestone. ...

CM4. Hunter Mountain

The broad summit of Hunter Mountain is probably an uplifted Tertiary erosion surface cut into the Jurassic pluton that makes up the mass of ...

CM5. Lost Burro Mine

Most of the tilted rock is the Lower Mississippian Lost Burro Formation. The Tin Mountain limestone lies above that and the ...

CM6. Goldbelt

According to Fife (1984), the chrysotile occurs just north of Goldbelt on the east side of Ulida Flat ...

CM7. South Pass

The Hunter Mountain-Panamint Valley Fault Zone passes through here and has accommodated about 2.4mm/yr of lateral motion within ...