The White Snake of Baja
Thursday, 14th April 2005 by Alex Turnbull
Rick Vincent sent us what he describes as 'The White Snake of Baja'. Looks like a river, but it is HUGE. You can still see it all the way out here!
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
damn that is big … what the hell is it?
I don’t think it’s a river, it WAS a river once but now it look only like sand…
Yeah, looks to me like a dried-up riverbed. I’m betting the white is shiny sediments. It does empty into the ocean, so we can be pretty sure it was a waterway at one time.
If I am correct in my geography, this is North of the town of San Felipe in Baja California Sur, Mexico. We drove along the coastline here back up to the California (U.S.) border, and the entire area had amazing salt deposits everywhere. My guess is that this is something like a dried-up salt flat, not shiny sediments per se.
If you get a chance, it is a spectacular area. And the Sea of Cortez / Gulf of California is a great place to swim.
Google sightseeing
Like a drifter, it was born to walk alone..?
Maybe it’s the start of a secret Coyote run used for getting illegal aliens across the US border… or maybe not. 😉
This is in Baja Norte, not Sur. It’s near the mouth of the Colorado where it empties into the Gulf. It’s obviously a dried up riverbed. The manner in which the Colorado empties into the Gulf now is massively different than the way it used to 150 years ago, thanks to water being siphoned off for farming and drinking. I wonder if this used to be part of the old bed of the Colorado back in the day.
May I please have the coordinates or an address to look this up for myself using a satellite program. Thanks.
Does anyone know what the Oriental message says?
Jeanne, The latitude and longitude are part of the Google maps URL, you should be able to find this at 31.596680,-114.960766.
Going down the only road it’s ever known?
Here I go again on my own . . .
If you zoom in on the first horizontal loop from the top, there appears to be an eye looking back at you. Eerie!!
Le Serpent Blanc de Baja
Vu par Google Maps Satellite.
Pour le voir en gros clickez ici….
it’s a river, and a lake, just southwest of La Ventana, Baja California. All the zone is flooded sometimes and dry other times, because it’s the delta of the colorado river. since a lot of water is used in the US, little arrives there.
I know I’m way late to the party on this one, but I think this is called “Arroyo Diablo”:
When describing the southern side of the Colorado River Delta: http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/geomorphology/GEO_11/index.shtml
“A number of areas of evaporite deposits show clearly as bright locations on the image due to the high reflectance of the salt. The snakelike “Arroyo Diablo” is apparently a stream channel from an earlier stage of delta development. “Las Salinas,” a salt pan with thick evaporite deposits, against the southwestern end of the piedmont terrace, has been mined for salt in the past.”
Las Salinas just happens to be the name of a nearby city as well.
Looking up more info on this apparently little studied shape, I find: http://www.uoregon.edu/~rdorsey/Downloads/Dorsey2006.pdf