Crowley Lake COLUMNS, Mono County, California

3D Model

Upon completion of the reservoir in 1941, strange columnar formations, some of which reached heights of 20 ft (6.1 m), were spotted along the reservoir’s eastern shore. Some[who?] described them as stone cylinders connected by fortified stone arches that had been completely covered and obscured for millions of years but which had been gradually unmasked by the incessant pummeling of the lake’s powerful waves, whose constant pounding had eroded the more malleable rock at the base of the cliffs encasing these pillars. The pillars were simply regarded as oddities until 2015 when geologists from UC Berkeley realized that they were the result of frigid water from melting snow seeping down into volcanic ash (the result of a catastrophic eruption more than 760,000 years prior), creating tiny holes in the hot ash, the byproduct being boiling water and steam, which then rose up and out of these same holes. Wikipedia.org