Enchanted Rock is a huge, pink granite exfoliation dome.
Granite forms several miles below the surface as magma slowly cools and crystallizes. Over time the granite is pushed to the surface during what geologist call a “mountain building event”. At this point nature and gravity take over and exfoliation occurs. Exfoliation is the process in which rocks weather by peeling off in sheets rather than eroding grain by grain. This process is what creates the dome like structure.
The Rock rises 425 feet above ground, 1,825 feet above sea level, and covers 640 acres. It is one of the largest batholiths (underground rock formation uncovered by erosion) in the United States.
Ok now that all of the “learnin’ is out of the way…. When we heard about the rock from the locals we thought what fun! Lets go climb a 400 foot rock. How hard can this be, it is smaller than a hill, more like a bump.
It was about 45 degrees, perfect for PA hikers, with a sustained wind of about…well we don’t know but at times it knocked us off balance; not so perfect. Yeah this was gonna be a “fun” climb. The closer we got to it the bigger it looked.
For the first part of the climb this is what the trail looked like. Just sandy dust winding through the rocks. At this point it was windy but not to bad.
After we got through that part of the trail, complete with nice trail markers, we got to the upper part of the rock. Here the wind picked up and it got much steeper.
We finally made it to the top! Great view on the other side too. However, it was REALLY windy on top. By now our faces burned from the cold, high speed wind and we were ready to get out of it.
On the backside of The Rock are a bunch of boulders that form small caves and lots of fun rock scrambling. But most of all a break from the wind. (2 pics below are John’s pic of me and mine of him)
Hey Mom!!! I’m in a cave. Good for you John!!!
There were cool rock formations all over the granite dome too.
We found lots of interesting plants too. (*wink*)
We took many more pictures and spent lots of time there just hiking around. I’ll have to do up a photo album for this place sometime.
Hey did you guys find any snakes while out walking the area? i like the smiling plant, how long did it take you guys to climb the rocks. Travel safe.
No, we didn’t see any snakes, it was too cold.
Had we just hiked straight to the top, probably 1/2 hour, but we didn’t. We took our time and investigated rock formations and plant life.
At one point we found a rock to take shelter behind and we sat a while and just enjoyed the scenery and beautiful sunny day.