Second-day road log frm Carlsbad to White City, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Salt Flat, Washington Ranch and return to Carlsbad
— Jim W. Adams, John W. Hawley, Lloyd C. Pray, and David W. Love

Today's tour concentrates on the truly world-class geology and paleontology of the Guadalupe Escarpment from Whites City to Salt Basin. The Escarpment is largely an exhumed Guadalupian shelf-margin complex. Facies associated with the shelf margin include shelf-crest shallow lagoonal carbonates, shelfslope carbonate shoals, backreef, reef, foreslope, toe-of-slope and basinal depositional environments. The basinal deposits of the Delaware Mountain Group include siliciclastic turbidites as well as carbonate debris flows from the reef and foreslope. In late Guadalupian time, water depth is estimated to have been 30 to 40 ft above the Capitan reef; the water depth increased basinward to 1800 ft. Progradational and cyclic sedimentation dominate most of the facies.

From the Carlsbad Civic Center, the tour route parallels the Guadalupe Escarpment along US-62/180 with detours and stops within the canyons cutting the escarpment. Stop 1 examines Tansill-equivalent reef facies and paleontology at the mouth of Walnut Canyon. By hiking up the escarpment near Stop 2, at the mouth of McKittrick Canyon, one can examine excellent exposures of all the major depositional environments from shelfslope to basinal facies. For the less athletically inclined, alternative tours of McKittrick Canyon to Pratt's cabin, Pratt's historic Ship-On-The-Desert, the Pinery (Butterfield Stage station) and Park Headquarters are logged as well. The tour continues southwestward along US-62/180. West of Guadalupe Pass, Stops 3 and 4 concentrate on sedimentary structures related to submarine channels and deep-water deposition in the Delaware Mountain Group. After descending across basin-bounding faults cutting the western escarpment of the Guadalupe and Delaware Mountains, the route crosses the Salt Basin graben for a panoramic view of the west face of the Guadalupe Mountains, with boldly exposed shelf-margin carbonates and the playa-dune complex of Salt Basin in the foreground. The tour then returns along the same route to Washington Ranch (and a barbecue for 1993 field trip participants). The tour ends at the Carlsbad Convention Center.