Maria Brumm is a graduate student at UC Berkeley. She studies 
This is an outcrop of Bishop tuff, an ash deposit created 760,000 years ago when the Long Valley Caldera exploded - though “exploded” is, if anything, an understatement. The photo was taken 15 miles (25 of your Earth kilometers) away from the eruption; it contains no persons for scale, but the outcrop is about 10m high. Ash deposits from the same eruption are found all over Southern California and as far east as Nebraska.
Tuff is what happens when a pile of hot ash (”ash”) and fragments of exploded crap (”breccia”) consolidates and hardens under its own heat and weight. If the proportion of exploded crap is too high, the result is more properly called a volcanic breccia, but the Bishop tuff is mostly welded ash. If you look at this formation up close, you’ll see that it is pink (for the same reason that granite is pink; it’s made of the same stuff) and sprinkled with little angular fragments that are often sparkly. Girliest. Rock. Evar!
And I hereby proclaim the Bishop tuff to be the tiara of the Sierra Nevada, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains to be the Princess of California, long may they collectively smile and wave in their mountainy way. The End.
Update: Kim suggests that the Gassetts Schist is the sparkly tiara of the Taconian Orogeny, and therefore the Green Mountains are the Princess of New England. I feel a meme coming on... what other rocks are royalty?
Comments
OMG, that is like soooo true. Royalty wave!
But my friends probably would not call me girly. Insane, possibly. ;)
Posted by: Tuff Cookie | March 14, 2008 9:23 AM
Hey, I've been there!
Happy Pi(e) Day, Maria!
Posted by: Ron Schott | March 14, 2008 10:47 AM
The Bishop Tuff rules.
Also, there are hot springs nearby. Because all princesses need spas.
Posted by: Kim | March 14, 2008 12:00 PM
"25 of your Earth kilometers" had me laughing out loud.
Thanks for this hilarious post!
Posted by: RoaldFalcon | March 14, 2008 6:10 PM
A famous locality for a famous ash-flow tuff - The Bishop - no, I mean The Princess. Well, and Kim, in her part of this mini-meme says maybe I should buy my own sparklies! So, I'll be going shopping now. :)
Posted by: Silver Fox | March 15, 2008 1:02 AM
The Cima Dome quartz monzonite is the exiled Papist queen of California mountains.
Posted by: Chris Clarke | March 24, 2008 11:56 PM