Four Extremes: Alabama Hills

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:59:59 -800

The Alabama
Hills are a collection of large, bulbous rocks out in the dry parts
of the Owens Valley just east of the road that leads up to the Mt. Whitney
trailhead. This site is particularly popular among directors of Western
movies, so we of course stopped there the morning after we got off the
mountain. From way down in the valley we could see all the way up the mountain
valley that we had climbed the previous day to the tip of Mt. Whitney. One
thing about these rocks that struck me as a little odd is that they seem to be
rather round, as if a lot of water had once worn their jagged surfaces flat. I
didn't see any obvious source of water, though I suppose it's possible that we
could have been standing on prehistoric seabed.