Lithic Roxborough

Here's a link to a blog called "Lithic Roxborough". The area is near Philadelphia, the Wissahickon Creek and surrounding areas. Welcome, Corey Hart!!

More pictures from a NY site

I posted details on this site at the Rock Piles blog. Here are some additional photos. I apologize for the poor quality on some of these. It was a bright, sunny day, but I was working mostly under pine trees. You can see more detail if you click on any of these photos.







Close up of a rock on top of a cairn:

Two similar structures - rocks stacked on upright rocks. First from front:
First from side:
Second:

If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you can see the similarity between this picture and the one above. A flat top standing stone with a triangular shaped standing stone in front of it.


Notice the chipmunk?

A side view of the chipmunk pile:

These piles were on or near the summit.


And this apparently natural but nonetheless interesting boulder on boulder was also at the summit:

A little site from this past summer

Here's a little site I found driving along a dirt road this past summer. I haven't reported on it because my stop there was so brief, I really didn't take the time to analyze it and thought I'd be back there soon. Well, I haven't been back there yet, so I thought I should post about it now, anyway.

The first sign of anything was driving on the road, looking downhill I could see a small rock pile just downhill. You can just see the road uphill and to the left in this photo:
Another rock pile below the road:
There were a few rock piles down there, not too well constructed and not all in a row, but any semblance of a "grid" would be better viewed when the leaves are off the trees, so I really can't say yet what is going on here.

I thought I should look above the road, too, since this road is of recent construction. Sure enough, just above the road bank I started to see some evidence of rock piles and cairns:


There was also a good view between structures, considering the amount of leaves on the trees. This is overlooking the tallest cairn to a smaller rock structure in the background:
I had some young travelers with me and one of them noticed something resting on the top of one of the cairns. I can best describe this as a piece of leather and possibly, if my memory serves me correctly, it's from a shoe (it's that black thing shaped like a cigar):

This site is about 1 mile to the southeast of the Logan site. I've posted about that site two other times, here and here.

"To The Greenwood Gone" blog

Click the title here for a new blog called "To The Greenwood Gone". It features stone construction in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The description of the long mound of rocks going up the hollow reminds me of this site in NY that I've already posted about here. For a quick preview of the long mound feature, I'll re-post the photo:

There is water just up the hill from this site, and over to the south and west. Here are two pictures of where water comes out of the base of the steep part of this mountain. Looking down:

Looking up:

I don't think that little rock stack at the source of the water is accidental.

Welcome PJA!!

A panorama of the wall bulge

This was my destination on the day when I walked through the old farmstead - the wall bulge on the far eastern side of this hill. I've photographed and posted this before, but wanted to get a panorama and a closer look at one rock in the wall bulge that looks, to me, like an "eye".

First, the panorama:

A close up of the "head" (with a lot of enhancement for scene balance because I was facing the sun). My half meter stick is just below a rock that looks like it could be an "eye".

Some close ups of the odd rock that looks like an "eye". Here the rock is sticking out, just above the half meter stick:
Here you can see it is precariously sandwiched between two larger rocks:
This is a straight-on view:

In retrospect, just now, I'm wondering how in the world is that tree growing right in the middle of that wall bulge?

Near an old farmstead

I followed a series of stone walls that have a strange mix of rock piles, cairns, a few small boulders and stone wall that go uphill, toward an old farmstead. The farmstead is on the western end of the large cairn site that I explore often. There's one spot here, close to the farmstead, where the pines are thick and there is a lot of underbrush, so I haven't walked through this little spot yet. I was surprised to find traces of something going on here, other than a clear (of rocks) flat spot that I would expect so close to a farmstead.

The small white hump in the middle of the picture is a rock that somewhat "points to" the rock pile in the background, either accidentally or deliberately.
A close up of that rock pile in the background:

This boulder is along the rock pile/cairn/stone row, not far from the rock piles in the previous photos. I can't help but think the placement of the upright stone is deliberate. That is my half meter stick in the photos. I should mention, too, that there are some spots of (spring?) water up there, too. The elevation is above 1800 feet.
The pictures aren't very good, I'll admit, it was too sunny and in the middle of the day. But what a nice walk on such a bitterly cold day!

Too much snow to see the rocks

We've really had too much snow to be able to see any rock piles. I've managed to get out a couple of times to "the bowl" and just observe, rather than explore.

Yesterday I hiked up to the U-shaped structure to try and catch the sunset.

I don't have any recent pictures of it, so here's one from over a year ago. In this shot, I am facing the opening:



Here's what it looks like covered in snow, but from the opposite view, so that I'm standing behind the structure, overlooking the opening, as you would be if you were sitting in it.


What a gorgeous view from up there! You can see the winter sunset just off to the left a little bit, right at the horizon. The opening heads due west, so it does not face the winter soltice sunset, but I have a hunch that March 21st might be a good day to check this one out again!



Incidentally, if you're wondering what's on that mountain range over there in the distance, you can click here and here for a little peek.

And here's one more look at that sunset. If you click on this photo, you can see that it overlooks "the bowl" from about the center to just off to the left.