Littered with thousands of boulders, Haystack Mountain is an awesome rockhounding spot just outside of Lone Pine, CA.
The mountain sits a few hundred feet apart from the main Inyo Mountain range.
The boulders themselves hide and hold a precious treasure inside of them, Amazonite, Feldspar and Smokey Quartz. Not as big or fantastic as the Colorado kind, but awesome nonetheless.
Sometimes climbing up amongst these giants makes me nervous. A giant boulder rolled down the mountain sometime in 2016 wiping out everything in it's path. I know because it wasn't at the bottom of the valley floor in 2015.
The mountain is also said to hold aquamarine, but I haven't found any there yet. The aqua I have found in just across from Haystack on the main Inyo range.
Thanks for reading!
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Lovely photograph of the lone boulder looking back at all
his boulder buddies on the hills and mountains @rt395! :-)
Big hike up that mountain, the vehicle looks real tiny in
the distance! Can imagine those huge rocks rolling down
yikes! I hear they gather no moss doing that! lol
Thank you very much for showing us this wonderful
place and boulders!
Thanks @shata. The mountain range in the very back of that picture is the Sierra Nevadas and I believe one of those peaks is Mt. Whitney, highest in the contiguous US.
It's weird climbing up the mountain and realizing you are pretty high up. The climb isn't difficult it's just you never know when one of those rocks is going to come tumbling down, especially in earthquake country.
Such rugged landscape and so many boulders what a wonderful entry for this challenge
Hey @tattoodjay, ya, very rugged. It used to be quite lush over 10k years ago, but the climate changed and Los Angeles diverted most of the run off water to LA so now it's dry and desolate, still gorgeous.
There are another group of hills you can't see in the background know as the Alabama Hills and they are full of similar boulders. They have been used for filming location since the early 1900's. Star Trek has used it several times as well as many other movie and television shows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Hills
Alabama Hills
The Alabama Hills are a range of hills and rock formations near the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada in the Owens Valley, west of Lone Pine in Inyo County, California, United States.
Though geographically separate from the Sierra Nevada, they are part of the same geological formation.
Thanks for the info very interesting and now off to check the link
Howdy sir rt395! wow a rock hounds dream! I think you could spend weeks there couldn't you?
I could and have spent several days up there hunting. The mountain range I was on in that photo was famous for gold, lead, zinc and a ton of different gems & Minerals. The Sierra Nevadas are the big one's in the background and we all know about their treasure. Honestly though, it is barren and either cold or hot so spending too much time there really gets to you.
Howdy sir rt395! That's interesting...have you spent alot of time in the Sierra Nevadas?