Mammoth Lakes is an amazing destination known around the world for it's world class skiing, hiking, biking, fishing and general outdoor recreating. What most people may not know is that it was also the location of a massive volcanic eruption that took place 760,000 years ago. 2,000 times more powerful than the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption, this explosion would create a massive caldera measuring 10 miles long and 2 miles wide and the hot volcanic ash from it would ultimately cover most of the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Known as tuff, this blanket of ash would help to create a stunning geological wonder and one that remained completely hidden or at least, up until the completion of the Crowley Lake Reservoir back in 1941. This is what Cindy and I along with our good friends Tony and Steph went to see and here are a few photos from our trip. We hope you enjoy.
On our way to meet up with Tony and Steph, we made a stop to enjoy the brilliant fall colors surrounding the Bridgeport area.
After we met up, we worked our way around Crowley Lake until we got out to the cliffs.
View on top of the cliffs and looking out across Crowley Lake.
Thanks to the banner year of snow we got from the previous winter, Crowley Lake was still surprisingly full for October and so the only way to get to where we wanted to be was to hike. You can just start to see what we were hoping to see out in the distance.
Filled in with over 180,000 acre feet of water, waves running across Crowley Lake could now crash along its cliffs and over time, they revealed something almost mythical in nature. As the soft pumice and ash began to erode away, stone columns - some as much as 20 feet tall began to appear along the cliff face like a colonnade of stone holding up the hillside above.
Apparently, the columns were created as cold water percolated down into the volcanic ash when it was still hot and steam rose out of it and "tiny spaces in these convection pipes were cemented into place by erosion-resistant minerals". According to a recent study done by UC Berkeley, there may be as many as 5,000 of these columns in this 2-3 square mile area.
Here's a shot from the other side of the cove. You can see how the columns are just starting to reveal themselves here.
It's a shame you can hear things in a photo but the entire time we were standing next to this cliff, you could see and hear small pebbles constantly falling away from its face. Geological time includes now!
Finally, after we climbed back up to our Jeeps, we made our way down into the Owens River Gorge so that we could enjoy the array of fall colors within it.
I hope you enjoyed following our adventures out to the Crowley Lake Columns. A big thanks needs to go out to JAGS for sending me an article about it in the LA Times as that's where a lot of the information I posted was sourced from. If you'd like to read it in depth, simply click on the link below:
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-adv-volcanic-columns-mystery-20151115-story.html
On our way to meet up with Tony and Steph, we made a stop to enjoy the brilliant fall colors surrounding the Bridgeport area.
After we met up, we worked our way around Crowley Lake until we got out to the cliffs.
View on top of the cliffs and looking out across Crowley Lake.
Thanks to the banner year of snow we got from the previous winter, Crowley Lake was still surprisingly full for October and so the only way to get to where we wanted to be was to hike. You can just start to see what we were hoping to see out in the distance.
Filled in with over 180,000 acre feet of water, waves running across Crowley Lake could now crash along its cliffs and over time, they revealed something almost mythical in nature. As the soft pumice and ash began to erode away, stone columns - some as much as 20 feet tall began to appear along the cliff face like a colonnade of stone holding up the hillside above.
Apparently, the columns were created as cold water percolated down into the volcanic ash when it was still hot and steam rose out of it and "tiny spaces in these convection pipes were cemented into place by erosion-resistant minerals". According to a recent study done by UC Berkeley, there may be as many as 5,000 of these columns in this 2-3 square mile area.
Here's a shot from the other side of the cove. You can see how the columns are just starting to reveal themselves here.
It's a shame you can hear things in a photo but the entire time we were standing next to this cliff, you could see and hear small pebbles constantly falling away from its face. Geological time includes now!
Finally, after we climbed back up to our Jeeps, we made our way down into the Owens River Gorge so that we could enjoy the array of fall colors within it.
I hope you enjoyed following our adventures out to the Crowley Lake Columns. A big thanks needs to go out to JAGS for sending me an article about it in the LA Times as that's where a lot of the information I posted was sourced from. If you'd like to read it in depth, simply click on the link below:
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-adv-volcanic-columns-mystery-20151115-story.html
