I ’m often fascinated by the stretch of highway halfway between Los Angeles and Mammoth Lakes Basin . Going due north , it startle as a nondescript drive through miles of arid desert before the lofty top of the Eastern Sierra Nevada come into view . And it ’s here , on a random turn - off from the highway , where one of the most seismically active regions in the country resides .
The Coso Volcanic Field is well known to drivers along Highway 395 , even if they do n’t realise they ’re driving past it . Its most seeable landmark , a dramatic maroon cinder strobilus knight Red Hill , can distinctly be run across from the route .
As a highly fighting geothermal area , Coso is no alien to earthquake horde — cosmic string of tremors that can strike in the one C in as piddling as a few days . The volcanic field is also home to basaltic lava flows , obsidian flow rate , rhyolite domes , cinder cone shape , geysers , and fumaroles ( steam - let out possible action in the terra firma ’s gall ) , most of which rest within the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake . memory access is restricted to passersby but one can walk right up to Red Hill , one of the youngest mountains in the land .
Turning off Cinder Road , we drive across a beautiful lava rate of flow and decent along the edge of an ancient lake bottom . Its sun - bake incrustation looked like a arial mosaic of tiles .
Red Hill is believed to have form during an eruption about 10,000 to 14,000 years ago . The clinker strobilus is write principally of scoria , a eccentric of volcanic rock-and-roll resembling pumice . By definition , clinker cone are steep , cone - shaped piles of volcanic debris , such as ash and hardened magma , build up up around vents .
Here the debris disgorge out around Red Hill in mounds of cherry-red , brownish , and black volcanic flakes resembling sand — like the superimposed sand art you find in bottle — but up close they ’re quite uncouth .
On either side of the clinker cone , remnants of volcanic rock are scattered across the otherworldly red landscape . If I fell asleep and got whisk out to the Coso Volcanic Field , I might have believed I ’d been transport to the surface of Mars . We were only a couple of miles off the highway but you ’d never know it wait around the desolate terrain .
In spite of its eeriness , this part of Inyo County , California , is also one of the most tranquil and fear inspire . The next clip I occur here , I ’m climbing to the top of the cinder strobilus !
