Tell Me Again What "Badwater" Is?
The Badwater 135 is held each year in July, when temperatures in Death Valley are likely to be hottest. When I say “hottest,” I don’t mean hot in the traditional sense of the work; after all, the hottest temperature ever recorded in Death Valley was 134 degrees. One should note this also stands as the hottest atmospheric temperature ever recorded on earth. On earth. Sure, that was back in 1913, but make no mistake: Death Valley got its name for a reason. The course itself covers 135 paved miles through Death Valley National Park and Inyo County, traveling through the remote towns of Furnace Creek, Stovepipe Wells, Panamint Springs, Darwin, Keeler, and Lone Pine – with a detour, this year, toward Olancha due to flooding. Starting at 282 feet below sea level and topping out 8,360 feet above sea level at the Whitney Portal, the course was originally conceived to go from the lowest point in the contiguous United States (the Badwater Basin at -282 feet) ...