Steady as a Rock

Have you ever heard of the phrase “steady as a rock”? Of course you have you’re not dumb. The other day somebody told me that I was steady as a rock. I’m pretty sure it was meant to be a compliment but just in case I asked him, “what kind of rock are we talking about?” He gave me a quizzical looked and replied, “Does it matter what kind of rock? All rocks are steady.” I just had to shake my head because not ALL rocks are steady.

“Steady as a rock” does not apply at Racetrack Playa and by playa I mean the area at the bottom of an undrained desert basin, not “yo, what up playa.” Racetrack Playa is located in the Death ValleyNational Park in California. Racetrack Playa is a dried up lake bed, a mile wide by a mile and a half long, surrounded by mountains. There are no trees, bushes or grass and there is no human habitation for miles.

In the Racetrack Playa you will find rocks of varying sizes. You will find some as small as pebbles and you will find boulders as large as 450 pounds. Many of the rocks show clear trails where they have been sliding across the surface. Even the biggest seem to move. They move up to 330 feet in nearly straight lines, and sometimes two or three seem to have moved in parallel. This is why it’s so aptly named Racetrack Playa.

The playa is dead flat, and there are no earthquakes or magnetic anomalies, so how do the rocks move? Could it be a trick? Well, if a person was to move the rocks, and the surface was soft enough for the rocks to leave trails, then the person moving the rocks would also leave footprints or tire tracks.

Nearly every theory that has ever been thought up has been disproved in one way or another. At one point it was believed that some how the wind moved would move the rocks. That theory was debunked when rocks that weighed as much as a human were found had also moved. Another theory was that ice sheets around the stones either helped to catch the wind or move in ice flows. This theory was disproved by Bob Sharp and Dwight Carey when they monitored several rocks for a seven year period and discovered no such ice sheets. So it remains a mystery as to how these rocks move.

How do I think they move? I don’t know. Maybe aliens come down from the sky and use the rocks as skis. Or maybe it’s just a really elaborate joke by people with Jedi powers to play with our on us normal minds. Or maybe those people who have “faith that can move mountains” go there for practice. I don’t know how it works but one thing is for sure, they are NOT steady.

So next time you tell someone they are “steady as a rock” make sure to tell them “steady as a rock not in Racetrack Playa”.