POST #21-10

Exploring The Volcanic Field

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Today, November 30th, we drove the 10 miles back north from our campsite at the Flagstaff KOA to the Sunset Peak Volcanic Field, an area of volcanoes just north of Flagstaff. The field covers 1,800 square miles of the southern boundary of the Colorado Plateau, and contains 600 volcanoes ranging in age from nearly 6 million years old to less than 1,000 years, of which Sunset Crater is the youngest. The highest peak in the field is Humphreys Peak, Arizona's highest at 12,633 feet and is a part of the San Francisco Peaks, an extinct stratovolcano complex.

The San Francisco Peaks are the remains of an eroded stratovolcano.  Prior to its collapse due to a lateral eruption (similar to the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980) to the northeast (around 200,000 years ago) and subsequent glacial erosion, the San Francisco Peaks is estimated to have been around 16,000 feet.  You can visualize the original mountain by continuing the line of the west and east sides of the peaks to where the lines meet on the above photo.  It's easy to see where the mountain blew out in this graphic...

We then drove on through the Volcanic Cinder Cones towards Sunset Crater.  On the way we passed the Bonita Lava Flow.  This lava flow, shown below, erupted from the west base of the cone. The absence of cinders on the flow suggests this occurred late in the eruptive life of Sunset Crater.  All of the hills seen in the background are more Cinder Cones. Watch this short video of a lava flow.  You can see how it looks identical to what we see here! (sorry about CNN😒)

We carefully picked our way into the flow...

You could easily damage yourself trying to walk around in this jumble of lava...

Here is a sign to help explain Lava Flows...Sorry about the shadow...

Here is where the lava flow came out of the base of the Sunset Crater Cinder Cone...The lava flow appears very recent...the plants are just now starting to take hold after 1000 years!  Sunset Peak in the background...

Here's a great aerial photo showing Sunset Peak and surrounding cinder cones and lava flows...

Here is a short clip from the 1969 movie "Easy Rider" where they are riding through the area!  I've watched that movie many times but never made the connection till I watched it again a couple nights ago!

We walked a bit up the side of the hill you see in the lower right of the photo above.  It's a loose gritty coarse sand like I have seen in photos of the Marine landing at Iwo Jima during WWII.  I wanted to get a feeling of what it was like when my Dad came ashore there on Iwo, trying to climb that loose grit.  Imagine climbing a steep hill like that with a heavy gear and your gun while under fire from above!!  It was very difficult to climb that hill!!

By the time we were finished exploring the Volcano Area it was nearly sundown.  We headed back to the KOA for dinner and to prepare for heading out in the morning to continue south...

Until Next Time!