With repeated rains soaking the area, the lake has also reached a depth of around 0.3m, meaning there is just enough water to enable activity that seems curiously out of place in the famous landscape arid Death Valley: kayaking.
“As soon as we got there the other day, we turned around and went back to town as fast as we could to buy some inflatable kayaks,” Donnelly said.
The drive from Badwater Basin to the nearest town – Pahrump, Nevada – is an 80-mile drive. But once there, Donnelly bought an inflatable kayak and headed back to the pop-up Manly Lake to spend the next few hours enjoying what had suddenly become an incredible kayaking experience.
“It was perfectly clear and still,” Donnelly said. “The sun was shining on the water. It was incredibly beautiful.”
The return of an ancient lake
The ancient Badwater Basin lake, located 85.95 m below sea level, evaporated tens of thousands of years ago, long before the arrival of the so-called 1849s in California to look for gold. After the prehistoric lake disappeared, the landscape accumulated sediment and concentrated salt deposits, giving the basin a unique and often photographed pattern of geometric salt polygons.
The last time in modern memory that the basin filled with such a long-lasting body of water was about two decades ago, according to Elyscia Letterman, interpreting park ranger for the National Park Service. “We have photographs of the lake from 2004 or 2005, when it was flooded in the same way,” she said.
But two decades is a long wait for the reappearance of a vanished lake in a scorched landscape, where temperatures can exceed 120F (49C) in the shade. Tourists wasted no time in making the most of this remarkable event. In addition to kayaking, visitors happily set up beach chairs and children in swimsuits have been spotted taking a dip in the newly formed body of water.