Last month I wrote about our visit to Dante’s View in Death Valley National Park. This month we move on to Zabriske Point. Zabriske Point is a highly eroded area with colorful sediment and rock formations along CA-190 south of Furnace Creek. I first heard of the place when I was in high school and my older brother was taking a cinema class that was covering the director Michelangelo Antonioni. Antonioni has a film called Zabriske Point (1970), a somewhat bizarre film of which I only remember people rolling in the dirt at Zabriske Point in Death Valley and a house blowing up at the end of the movie.

Zabriske Point is named after Christian Brevoort Zabriske, a VP and General Manager of the Pacific Borax Company. The Pacific Borax Company drove development of the borax mining industry in Death Valley in the early 20th century and made Twenty-Mule Team Borax a household name.

The area around Zabriske Point is composed of sediments from an ancient lake, it is part of the Amargosa Range, just like Dante’s View. This makes for a variety of colors and textures in the landscape. The parking area is just off of CA-190 and it is a short walk up to a view area. The view to the west has what is perhaps the “point” in Zabriske Point.

Looking back at the parking area, you can see the Funeral Mountains in the background. Click on any picture for a full-sized version.

The light foreground sediment contrasts with the dark rock in the higher elevations.

There are hiking trails that cross over onto the Badwater Basin side of the mountains, including going over to Golden Canyon. The people hiking in the foreground provide some scale to the view.

Badwater Basin is visible in the distance, with the Panamint Range in the background.

Snow-covered Telescope Peak, the highest peak in the Panamint Range can be seen over the ridge of the hill with Bennett Peak and Rogers Peak to its left.

This panoramic view shows the view from the lookout area.