Rock Stacks:
In 1982 a paper, "Catastrophic debris avalanche from ancestral Mount Shasta volcano, California", was published proposing to answer two major geologic anomalies of the Shasta Valley to be a massive landslide. The first anomaly is described in the aforementioned paper "The mounds and hills of Shasta Valley have puzzled geologists for more than half a century". The second is rocks, big and little, that are not where they were created. How did the rock move? In their hypothesis the hills and the rock stacks on them are ruble from a landslide which traveled over 25 miles. This paper has been cited over a 100 times and has become the de facto explanation. In reality it is a just a guess and has never been independently verified. Critical evidence is absent such as a landslide scar and a triggering volcanic event. Without such basic important evidence it would seem to a non-geologist that this hypothesis should not have made it off of the drawing board without other very substantial supporting evidence of which none is shown in the paper. The description of the Shasta Valley hills given in the paper sounds absolutely convincing. The physical evidence in the valley indicates that description is not accurate.
Shasta Valley Rock Stacks:
Characteristics of rock stacks:
A rock stack as used here means debris free rock piles of any size and also includes rocks arranged in patterns on the surface of the ground. The main criteria is that here it is considered artificial. Most are on the sides, ridges and tops of hills and mounds, same as the rock lines.
Contain many rocks which have smooth flat surfaces, smooth curved surfaces, holes, grooves, coatings, wedges, squares and other missing pieces. The rocks show no signs of how these pieces were removed, they are simply missing.
Most of the big rocks in Shasta Valley rock stacks are of a quality andesite, but in at least one area of the valley the main component is basalt. The andesite is fine grained mixture similar to a concrete without gravel only much stronger. There is no reason this andesite should fracture with a smooth surface and since it since it is a well mixed composition and not a part of layered lava flows.
Areas of heavy lichen growth identical with the lichen growth on the rock lines.
Most, if not all, have at least one of several different colored coatings, usually more than one. These coatings are not products of weathering.
Beneath the lichen growth the andesite and basalt base rock shows little in the way of weathering. Limestone weathers easier and is more weathered. The lichen seems to be growing ont the coatings first and then slowly spreading to the surrounding base rock. Academia says the rock is over 300,000 years old, now that is just mean, it doesn't look a day over 50,000. Bad joke, but most of the coatings are heavily weathered and lichen food yet the base rocks of andesite and basalt show little signs of weathering.
There are many holes, grooves and other artificial surface alterations.
No fill or debris between the rocks, but many have smaller rocks which have been inserted to create space between the rocks.
Rocks appear to have been stacked on the (then) surface of the ground and most do not appear to include outcrops, some clearly don't.
These rock stack photos are also on the White Quartz page.
