Carolina Environmental Diversity Explorations
Lonely mountains · By Dirk Frankenberg
Erosion
Figure 6. Quartzite erodes in curved forms like these. (Photograph by the author. More about the photograph)
Another interesting feature of the quartzite is the way it erodes. Its rate of erosion is slow, and thus so is the monadnock’s erosion beneath it. But when it does erode, it forms curved surfaces that geologists call “spherical or curved weathering.” Figure 6 shows examples of this type of weathering as it occurs at the top of the little pinnacle of Pilot Mountain.
