Devils Postpile National Monument

That contraction creates stress, and the rock relieves that stress by cracking in a regular pattern, forming columns with polygonal cross-sections.

You see the same process at places like Giant's Causeway in Ireland or Devil's Postpile in California.

Cliff faces of tall, vertical stone pencils, all neatly packed together like a stone organ.

On Pohnpei and nearby areas, similar basalt outcrops exist.

So I did the JMT in 2015 and 2020, and, you know, you kind of-- You don't, you don't go into Mammoth unless you're resupplying or whatever, but you pass, you know, as the crow flies, you pass right through there not too far away.

And then on, like, that first climb at Mammoth, you can s- actually see, like, Devil's Postpile and, like, some of the things from the PCT, JMT over there.

Um, and it's a really cool perspective if you've been over th- in that area because you're seeing it from a different side and, um, it felt really special to me having fallen in love with that area but never been to, like, Mammoth Lakes.

So I hope you get a, a similar experience out there.

Let's hurry up and get through them.

Devil's Postpile.

This is in Crowley Lake, California.

This is another buried massive tree stump.

Day five.

Take some time, figure some things out, and then meet back up with the trail at Devil's Postpile, which would put us back on track.

The thru-hike option is a bonk.

Oh, I hate toe socks, but I hate blisters more.

And we were using this app along with our paper map to navigate where there would be water sources.

Yes.

And so Devil's Postpile, Red's Meadow, Rainbow Falls, that all is in one spot, and we were walking through what I would call, like, a lot of dusty, dirty woods.

Mm-hmm.

The result is a field of long, mostly hexagonal prisms that stand upright, or lie in tangled heaps, columnar jointing.

If you've seen the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, Devil's Postpile in California, or the colonnades of Iceland's lava fields, you already know what this looks like.

Perfectly straight, multi-sided pillars packed together like a bundle of pencils.

You don't have to carve these.

Yeah, we made some decisions about the trail that day too.

Specifically that we were going to take some time, figure some things out, and then meet back up with the trail at Devil's Postpile, which would put us back on track tomorrow.

for miles.

We were very concerned about where we needed to be at, you know, miles at which day.