Malibu Creek State Park: My personal photography for a change...

Gotta love escaping the city, even if it means enduring traffic on a Saturday in Los Angeles... I found myself and four friends scrambling around the rocks of the jagged Goat Buttes right around dusk and through the empty creek beds of Malibu Creek State Park-- which were coated with, and maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, what seemed like white or decaying algae. Pretty crazy.

The 7,000 acres of public land are best understood in regards to geology with a quote from geocaching.com (I just signed up-- free!):

"The Conejo Volcanics are an entire series of igneous rocks that came from a volcano (possibly 3) located in the western Santa Monica Mountains. One of the eruptions blew apart the overlying rock into large angular chunks (the breccia) as it spewed lava, in this case basalt and ash. As this mix of material came down and/or flowed across the landscape it cooled with the pieces of other rock inside it combining to become the basaltic breccia. You can also see the gas that was still trapped in the basalt as it cooled and formed small bubbles in the rock."

I guess Sugarloaf Peak may have been the inspiration for Paramount Pictures' logo... huh. Plenty of cinematic value within this park.

I need to bring to attention the role wikipedia (along with flickr and google reader) plays in my geological learning experience due to Whittier College's geology department being under construction... I donated and recommend everyone who can give a little should:

Next trip is either Topanga Canyon, Gillette Ranch, secret waterfall in Pasadena... and I still gotta get up to Griffith Park before I graduate. Boy it's tough living in Whittier without a car sometimes, when so many geological explorations are only within a few hours of driving.

P.S. If anyone reads this and knows of any interesting geological work in the SF Bay area, please please feel free to email me.