Hughes Mountain Columns

Photograph by James Kocher.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Hughes Mountain columns
Hughes Mountain Natural Area, Irondale, Missouri.

Mr. Kocher writes: “This mountain is composed of columnar-jointed rhyolitic ash-flow tuff-ignimbrite. The single column in the foreground is broken, and shows a plane of deposition with several crushed/flattened pumice fragments. These fragments are the lighter-colored blotches in the darker ash matrix. Age = ~1.4 Ga; Neoproterozoic. U.S. quarter for scale.”