On Tuesday of this past week, a boulder, roughly 25 million years old, give or take, began to show some signs of instability. At some point in the past—we’re not sure whether it was decades, centuries, or millennia—it broke off the parent rock that it was once a part of, rolled once or twice, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge, never moved again.

For all of us, this king size piece of rhyolite has been a fixture of the local scenery at the top of the switchbacks on the Main Trail, only a stone’s throw from Picket Post House. It is big, probably 12 feet in its longest dimension and weighing countless tons, all of it bearing down on a slope that angles towards Queen Creek below. The Main Trail zig zags its way down the slope, and makes its first turn a few dozen feet below, passing directly in front of the boulder. [Read more…]