Annadel State Park

USA / California / Santa Rosa /
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Wilderness park, 55,000 acres of former cattle ranch. Operated by the state of California. Fee use. Excellent site for hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding.

Trails are frequently rocky and sections require care to traverse while others are merely steep. Trails marked as hiking only should be treated as such since horses have been known to break legs and have to be put down. As few park patrons are equipped to put down a horse this can result in considerable pain for the animals and humiliation for their owners. Horses are expensive. Removing a horse carcass from the more remote trails is not cheap either.

Geology note: This site is an extinct volcano, or rather several of them which evolved from basaltic to andesitic to rhyolitic type volcanoes, which is kinda rare in the world of vulcanology. There are also springs along or just below ridge lines in the park, which is unusual. Additionally, within the main crater there is uplifted Glen Ellen Formation mud stone and some mildly metamorphosed phyllite. Low quality petrified wood is also common in and around the park, believed evidence of rhyolitic eruptions and heavy ash fall. As soils in the area are primarily composed of smectite and monmorillonite clays (generated by decayed volcanic ash) and various faults are known to run through the park and surrounding mountain ranges this makes the park fairly interesting to view in the wintertime, when the grass is shorter and the springs and outcrops are more visible. Documentation of the park by geologists is incomplete due to the complexity of the volcanic events overlapping through the strata.
More Info-www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=480
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annadel_State_Park
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   38°25'34"N   122°36'42"W

Comments

  • Great place for mountain biking
This article was last modified 18 years ago