Image Index

On this field trip, we'll visit Pilot Mountain, Hanging Rock, Crowders Mountain, and Stone Mountain.

Figure 1. By the beginning of Pliocene time, streams had remodeled the land surface, leaving the ancient Schooley Peneplain as mountaintops in the Blue Ridge and monadnocks in the Piedmont. Click to enlarge.

Figure 2. Erosion causes elevation changes between materials of different resistance. Here, a “micromonadnock” has formed in a spoil pile.

Figure 3. Pilot Mountain looms with the other monadnocks of the Saruatown Mountains in the background.

Figure 4. The distinctive profile of Pilot Mountain is easily recognized from a distance.

Figure 5. A closer look at Pilot Mountain shows horizontal layers of rock called bedding planes.

Figure 6. Quartzite erodes in curved forms like these.

Figure 7. The tilted bedding planes of Sauratown Mountain are visible in this photograph.

Figure 8. Gorges Creek creates a series of waterfalls at the base of Hanging Rock.

Figure 9. The walls of Gorges Creek's lower cascade show deformed, folded rock.

Figure 10. Crowder Mountain is part of a set of monadnocks along the North Carolina-South Carolina border.

Figure 11. Stone Mountain is a granite intrusion monadnock in Wilkes County.