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Hole-in-the-Wall
FC3. Location/Access:(36o 24.902’N; 116o 43.536’W) The road to Hole-in-the-Wall is located 1.8 miles past the turnoff to Zabriskie Point or 5.4 miles up Highway 190 from the Badwater Road turnoff. The turnoff lies between the entrance and exit of 20 Mule Team Canyon. The GPS coordinates are 3.6 miles up the wash from Highway 190. The road is gravel and travels up the wash. High clearance is needed and four-wheel-drive may be required if it has not been beaten down by enough vehicles traversing the route since the last washout.
Best Time: Afternoon, except mid-summer.
Geology: This site affords a spectacular view of Quaternary tectonics as the upper members of the Furnace Creek formation have been tilted to a near vertical dip since the Pliocene along the Wall Fault (see cross sections D and E in McAllister, 1970). This uplifted rock has been eroded by water and debris flows thus producing the “Hole-in-the-Wall”. The exact sequence of erosion and tectonics is not clear. If you continue through the gap, you will enter a small valley which forms a graben-like structure between the Wall Fault and the main trace of the Furnace Creek fault zone just beyond at the base of the Funeral Mountains.
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