Monday, December 26, 2011

Death Valley 2011






Its been a long time since I posted anything here. This time the seven month delay was because I wanted to upload a video to YouTube and embed it here, but every time I tried to upload it I found that my internet connection was too slow. I would try to upload it at home, or at my office, and I would get a message that it was going to take 160 to 180 minutes. And then the upload would time out before it completed. The DSL connections I'm getting are very, very slow, so I'm doing something about that, but that's another story. I got the video uploaded by taking it to Great Basin College and using their fiber optic broadband connection. Took 6 minutes.

So, Stuart and I made another April trip to Death Valley, did some camping, some exploring, and had a great time. While we were up near the crest, on the eastern side of the valley in the Funeral Mountains, near the former site of Chloride City, this is what we across:



Based on the help provided by Sam Hipkins, in the comments below, we now believe these are Crotalus Stephensi - Panamint Rattlesnake

2 comments:

Sam Hipkins said...

Fascinating!! Stuart told me about the two snakes and I had a vague idea of what was going on, but now that I see it...WOW...no wonder you two were so silent during the whole thing. The following article may shed some light on this behavior.

Check this out... http://www.jstor.org/pss/27669579

~Bungalow Bill~ said...

Thanks Sam. We wanted to figure out which species of rattler these represent. The Mojave, or Western? Maybe we can find a snake expert to help us.