This week I visited El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
El Capitan is an impressive vertical formation on the north side of Yosemite
Valley.
The mountain is almost entirely granite, the uppermost
portion of the cliff face is Taft Granite and there are dark veins of a third
igneous rock, diorite, throughout the entire face.
The granite is under immense internal tension from the
compression experienced prior to the erosion that brought it to the surface.
These forces contribute to large granite flakes that are slowly detaching from
the main rock face.
The two flakes visible here are the so-called Texas Flake in the center of the picture
and the Boot Flake slightly higher.
The Texas Flake is about the size of
two tennis courts while the Boot Flake
is about a third of a tennis court.
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