Thr Devil’s Punchbowl and the Devil’s Chair
Once upon a time some 25 million years ago while Mother Nature was taking its course, Devil, one SOB was left to himself doing as he pleased. Devil played tricks and making pranks on everyone including North America and Farallon, two brothers who were attached to each other like tectonic plates. Devil liked to smack North on the back of his head and when he turns around to see who had been hitting him, he only saw Farallon whom he smacked even harder to get even.
Many more fights followed until North smashed Farallon and poor Farallon broke into pieces. Farallon's demise made Pacific very angry that he came home to confront North ramming and denting him but getting stuck with him instead. The dent that resulted where Pacific rammed into North America became the Devil's punchbowl. Today, the Devil's Punchbowl Natural Area highlights a tilted sandstone formation that becomes a 300-feet deep canyon in the northern slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains
Five million years after the demise of Farallon, North America and Pacific had another big fight. Mother Nature intervened and broke North America and Pacific apart. Because of their deep-seated rift against each other, North America turned 90 degrees clockwise southeast toward Mexico. Meanwhile, Pacific turned northwest toward Seattle. The San Andreas Fault became thier tectonic boundary. About five to seven million years ago, around the area where Mother Nature broke the fight between Pacific and North America, the Transverse Ranges rose. The San Gabriel Mountains is part of the Transverse Ranges amd considered to be part of
the Pacific Coast ranges and a physiographic region of North America.
But there are times that one wonders what it's like to hit rock bottom.
The lowest possible point at the 1,310 acre that constitute the Devil's Punchbowl natural area is the bottom of the 300-feet deep canyon cut by the runoff of large quantities of water from the higher San Gabriel Mountains. The Devil's Punchbowl is technically a depression on the earth's surface created over millons of years by tectonic activities or earthquakes below the ground. Geologists surmise that about sixty million years before, a basin formed beneath a shallow ocean around the Devil's Punchbowl area. The ancient basin was bordered on the north by the granite rocks visible from the Piñon Ridge which is east of the Devil's Punchbowl nature center.
The easy 1-mile Devil's Punchbowl loop trail leads into a moderately rated 7.5 mile trail that goes into the Devil's Chair. Instead of switchbacks, the trail is a series of ups and downs traversing briefly with the 2,600 mile-long Pacific Crest Trail. While North America and Pacific plates grind past each other in a strile-slip displacement manner and in opposite directions transforming boundaries at a rate of one inch per year, Devil sits back and watches from his chair. For hikers, the devil's chair is a view deck constructed on the tip of a granite rock promontory. The secured 50-foot protruding rock overlook provides a near 360-degree view of the colorful rocks of various forms and sizes that sums up God's creations long before Mother Nature designated Him to be Our Father.
-Revelation 12:9
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