We’ll take a one- or two-day break from photos after today, so if you have some good ones, now’s the time to send them in. In the meantimes, we have some lovely photographs from Robert Woolley of a natural formation of basalt. I’ve never seen it, but wish I had (or will). Robert’s intro is indented below, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
These pictures are at Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, which I visited in 2014. It’s 173 acres studded with various kinds of columnar basalt; see here for more on its geologic formation. The first time I saw picture of columnar basalt (at another location) in National Geographic, I stared at them for a long time, thinking they must be man-made. But no—they’re completely natural. Giant’s Causeway is the only place I’ve seen this phenomenon. It’s a very popular tourist site, and nearly impossible to get photos of the central pile without random strangers in them, because people constantly swarm it. (I managed to get one shot with just two people in it, but that was the smallest number possible on the day I was there.) But you can wander a little way from that most popular spot and see lots of different variations on the hexagonal-column theme. It’s a beautiful, amazing place.
I don’t have anything more useful to add in any individual captions. They would all just say, “More columnar basalt”!
Wow I love this variation on RWPs!
Always interesting! Thanks.
Led Zeppelin “Houses of the Holy” cover art.
I visited in 2022 and it was packed with people.
Amazing!
What a trip!
The range of RWP is great as it also includes geology, like this excellent set, astronomy, and human culture.
There is. trick to remove people or other unwanted clutter, so long as you have multiple pictures of the same spot. There are programs that let you stack and align pictures into layers, and then you can use what are called layer masks to digitally paint bits of one picture into another. Here one would paint basalt over people. Many photo editing programs support this process, including one called Gimp which is completely free to use.
Da Dia Reef, Vietnam has similar rock formations.
These are absolutely incredible! Geology of the formation is fascinating. As you say, myth often attributes these natural formations to a giant…or also often to the devil, such as the Devil’s Marbleyard in the Shenandoah of Virginia (I’ve mentioned this before on WEIT). There is a nice writeup on the geology of the Devil’s Marbleyard by the geologist, adventurer, and travel writer, Blondecoyote at https://theblondecoyote.com/2013/01/12/devilish-geology-at-the-devils-marbleyard/
Ah, yes! Like Devil’s Post Pile near Mammoth Lakes, California.
Columnar basalt is very cool. It’s actually quite common. Here in the Pacific Northwest, one can see innumerable examples in the Columbia River gorge.
Cool, and ironically that is the basis for how it forms. Cooling magma.
Iceland has multiple sites with columnar basalt.
Great documentation of an incredible site. Thanks so much!
It’s astounding to see.