Roaring Brook Falls by Ron Schott

Canon EOS 550D (T2i)

GigaPan Epic100 (2nd generatio...

Roaring Brook on Giant Mountain in the Adirondacks holds a special place in my heart because it was the site (a bit further upstream) of my first geology research project, undertaken as an undergrad at Colgate University. The falls occur where the hanging valley of Roaring Brook joins the main valley of the Auasble River. At this location Roaring Brook has carved its path down into a meter-wide mafic dike and with the low flow the day I visited it hardly seems capable of clearing such a wide swath of unvegetated bedrock as you see here. Had I been here just a few days later, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Irene, one might have glimpsed the fury Roaring Brook under high discharge conditions. (Of course, given that the storm wiped out Hwy 73, there's also little chance I could have accessed the site.) In fact, an even stronger geologic force is responsible for the bedrock scar and bouldery debris seen in this view. In June 1963 a heavy downpour triggered a massive landslide down the Roaring Brook Valley (www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/525826.html ).
The view at the base of the falls is not as conventionally spectacular as the view from the top of the falls, as shot by Chris Fastie: www.gigapan.org/gigapans/62968/ By sheer coincidence, fate nearly brought the two of us together the day I shot this GigaPan - I'll let you read about it in my Google Plus stream: plus.google.com/108972509678555833657/posts/LK533UUUeMP  Here's the GigaPan Chris shot later the same morning, considerably further up the Giant of the Valley: www.gigapan.org/gigapans/85260/
And one more GigaPan to point you to... a macro of a boulder of anorthosite I previously collected near this site: www.gigapan.org/gigapans/11454/