Man uses the Bonneville Salt Flats to test the limits of their machines.

Mother Nature uses the Salt Flats to test the limits of man.

The Bonneville Salt Flats are the graveyard of an ancient lake. Its sodium skeleton is all that remains.

Scattered over 30,000 acres of vast nothingness, 147 million tons of salt float like an ice cap just inches above the water table.

It is here . . . that water and salt lock horns, engaged in a never-ending battle for control.

Nights attack with unrelenting cold and storms that flood the landscape.

The days volley back — unleashing blistering heat and forcing the water into retreat.

During the summer months . . . the hardened salt surface reigns.

During fall and winter . . . the salt sinks below a mirrored glass horizon of flood water.

The vastness of this territory is not to human scale. A terrain so expansive that the curvature of the earth can be seen from every direction.

However, from most vantage points one sees only a foreign planet devoid of life. A climate so inhospitable not a single living organism calls it home.

The Bonneville Salt Flats are as ominous as they are beautiful. Magic and cursed in equal measure.

It could only be here, in this dangerous and unpredictable realm.

That men would dare to fly.