King Canyon: Part 2

The first part of the walk around the rim of Kings Canyon is a steepish climb up at ridge that sticks out into the valley floor.  Although its a rather sharp way to start the walk, it does get almost all of the up out of the way right at the start.

Once your "up" you can walk around the rim of the Canyon, with just a short drop back down towards the valley bottom at the canyons narrow point.  Its a wonderful walk.

Once you are near the head of the canyon you start to get views of the main walls - which are to say the least rather spectacular.  Over millions of years a small crack in the surface has been expended to form this canyon of red and orange rock.

The rock of the canyon was formed in the bed of an old sea and in places you can still see the wave ripple marks in the body of the rocks.  All it needed was a sand castle and it would have been a modern beach (albeit a rather hard one!).

The central tenant of geology is that the present is the key to the past - in other words the things that are happening today, also happened in the past.  And current geological features, no matter how big, are formed by these same processes.  Kings Canyon is one of the best places to see this idea converted into a landscape.

You can find more pictures from around the world (and less Grade 8 geology!) at Our World Tuesday.