11 April 2011
Old Rag gigapans
Posted by Callan Bentley
Lily and I took a hike yesterday over Old Rag Mountain, a popular destination in Shenandoah National Park. I took the opportunity to shoot a few gigapan images of the scene. If you click on the word “Gigapan” in the lower right of any of these images, it will take you to gigapan.org’s full page viewer.
Once we got above the trees, this was the view to the north:
This was the scene looking west at the second big uphill rock “scramble,” with the mountain’s summit in the distance at the right:
Lastly, check out these opferkessel atop on of the granite outcrops:
There! It’s just like hiking the mountain yourself, except that your legs are a lot less sore than mine are.
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.
These remind me of the “solution pits” on Stone Mountain and nearby granitic gneiss pavement outcrops.
Have you seen this article (or a similar one from Earth magazine) about how Native Americans used them for salt production?
http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2009/5225/
The edges on the ones in your photos look like the artificially enlarged ones.
Probably the same thing, except this is no doubt hydrolysis of feldspar and frost wedging that makes them bigger, not dissolution.
Amazing how that one area of exposed granite outcrops look so much like the rock scrambling you find everywhere in the Wonderland of Rocks in Joshua Tree, with the foliage providing the different look.