Walking Rocks

Have you ever seen rocks walking?

NO??!! Can rocks walk?

Yes. At the Death Valley in Eastern California, Rocks walk.

Recetrack Palya is what exactly the place is called. Located in Mojave Desert in California, the place has other oddities too, like this place is situated about 86 metres below the sea level and yet is the hottest and driest place in North America.

The rocks that moved weren’t light as one may think. They were heavy like 318 kgs (yes, three hundred and eighteen kilograms). Sometimes the trails they left measured as long as 250 metres (a quarter kilometre).

What made them move or what quest these rocks had or whom they wanted to visit has been a mystery for years. People claimed it could be alien’s job – it could be devils – it could be magnetism – it could be heavy winds or simply it could have been by some pranksters.

From where do these rocks come from is also not clear, but were safely assumed that they were from the adjacent hills.

Yet another intriguing fact is that no one has ever seen these rocks move but there were trails.

Some trails were straight lines, some curvy and some zig zag. The trails weren’t shallow either; they were quite deep. 

Enigmatic?!

It remained an interesting mystery until 2006 when Ralph Lorenz a scientist from NASA spoiled it all or rather solved it all.

The valley receives heavy rainfall and the temperature goes below freezing points (remember, the place is below sea level). The valley gets filled with water and rocks glide down from the nearby hills. The surface of the water freezes, while water below doesn’t. The rocks, get embedded in ice with part of rocks sticking out below (in water that hasn’t frozen). Below the water or at the basin, there is sand. When the ice glides, the rocks glide too. And when they so glide, they leave strong trails on the sand below. Post rainfall, in summer when the water dries up, the trails remained and the rocks remained too.

Phew! An unsolved mystery is more interesting than a scientific reason. Isn’t it?