Location Taken: Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho
Time Taken: June 2010
It’s odd to find a hill this monochromatic. Just a lump of brown-grey, with one pale stripe winding uphill.
Well, it’s odd unless you happen to visit a cinder cone, anyway. Though I suppose cinder cones are pretty rare, so it’s still odd.
The hill is a giant pile of volcanic cinders, spat out of the earth over the millennia. They’re one of the tamest of volcanic features, though this particular area also had occasional lava flows in the past.
Cinder cones are also one of the shortest-lived volcanic features. Little grows on the cinders, and they’re small enough to get moved by the wind, so they erode away after just a few millennia. A really short time span, really, if you’re working in geologic time.
The pale stripe is a path worn into the cinders, pounded down and polished by countless shoes tramping up the hill to see what the world looks like from a few dozen feet higher.
I didn’t bother to climb the cone. There were other things I wished to see, and the light was fading fast.
