a few more photos

[nibot]

Here are a few more photos from the trip I took a few weeks ago. On the third day, we hiked up out of the Fish Creek valley (where we were at the trip's lowest elevation, 6340 feet), a thousand feet up onto a sort of ridge on the side of the valley of the middle fork of the San Joaquin river. In this first picture we see the middle fork of the San Joaquin river leaving out to the West:



From the same point looking North, we see Mammoth Mountain (bald in the upper right of the photo) in the distance. Our destination, Devil's Postpile / Red's Meadow, is just under Mammoth mountain:



We camped somewhere near the trees seen after the prominant outcropping in this photo, just after crossing Cold Creek, in an overused but very convenient campsite. We heard what might have been a bear come crashing through the woods around midnight. I yelled at it and we didn't hear from it again. Bear or isolated tree falling down?

Along the way, we saw rock formations looking more and more postpile-esque; the rock formed from lava that cooled into hexagonal columns:



(Procrastination project: write a program to simulate cooling lava / evaporating mud and see if hexagonal jointing arises.)

Click on the 'Current Location' for this entry, and choose "Terrain" view in Google Maps to get an awesome view of the topography of the place; you'll understand immediately what you're looking at in the first two photos. To the south you'll find a long east-west valley with Iva Bell hotsprings at its eastern end; and north of that you'll find Duck Lake.

Comments

[indomitability.livejournal.com]

I so so so love the eastern Sierras. Incidentally, when I die, I want to be scattered right here (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=june+lake,+ca&ie=UTF8&ll=37.730267,-119.136815&spn=0.016665,0.038624&t=p&z=15), which isn't too much farther north from your link above. Found a pic of the spot here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/melonman/1000635685/sizes/o/in/set-72157601198857414/)... I stayed here when I worked at the pack station in college and loved it.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you worked at a pack station! Which one?

[indomitability.livejournal.com]

Seriously?!?!?! I worked at Frontier in June Lake for three summers in college!!! LOVED it. And, if I do say so myself, a MUCH better outfit than Red's Meadow. And I'm speaking from what I saw firsthand w/ Red's, not just hearsay.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

What did you do there? Bree doesn't believe that "cowgirls" exist!

[indomitability.livejournal.com]

Hehehe!! Hmmm... lemme see if I can find a pic!! Wranglers definitely do exist. I mostly handled day rides, but there are pictures of me somewhere on horseback leading a string of mules up the mountain.

[indomitability.livejournal.com]

Here ya go (http://indomitability.livejournal.com/529295.html). Sorry for the lousy cell phone pic--it's a picture I have framed (one of those frames you put all the smaller pics in) in my living room. :-)

[rosiedee.livejournal.com]

Procrastination project: write a program to simulate cooling lava / evaporating mud and see if hexagonal jointing arises.

I can't find a citation off the top of my head, but yes! (Or at least, I would imagine the answer for that case is yes. But I do know that hexagonal columns show up in some 3-D models of Rayleigh-Bénard convection.)

[nibot.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9nard_cells : "Convective Bénard cells tend to approximate regular right hexagonal prisms, particularly in the absence of turbulence, although certain experimental conditions result in the formation of regular right square prisms" !

I wasn't even thinking about convection... I was thinking perhaps the effect might be seen in the plane; cracking would appear to relieve stress, and maybe it would be hexagonal.

[rosiedee.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCS-3V8THV4-6&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d11fd54aeb962078d4b6a679e855ab09) sounds like a fun kitchen-sink experiment! Do check out those wtf index terms, at least.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

cool!

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Here's a temporary cached copy: Experimental Simulations of Basalt Columns (http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~tobin/lj/2008/08/BasaltColumns.pdf)

"hydrodynamic kaleidoscope"

[nibot.livejournal.com]

http://www.magnetosphere.ru/~avg/publications/PRE_046313_v67_2003.pdf

Re: "hydrodynamic kaleidoscope"

[rosiedee.livejournal.com]

I can't get it to load.

:(

Re: "hydrodynamic kaleidoscope"

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Here's the figure that caught my eye. Apparently (I didn't read the whole note) these are convective cells that developed in simulation:

Re: "hydrodynamic kaleidoscope"

[rosiedee.livejournal.com]

Whoa, trippy.