As you drive up U.S. Route 395 you turn on Whitney Portal Road and and head straight toward the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S.

The road winds through the heavily eroded Alabama Hills until you make the turn off the paved route and onto Movie Flat Road. The dirt road wanders through a large open space flanked on all sides by these massive granite monoliths. Many old films were taped back here and even today you will still occasionally run across production crews.

The rounded, weathered contours of the Alabama's, form a sharp contrast between the crisply sculptured ridges of the Sierra. This leads the viewer to believe the Alabama's are almost antique in nature. Actually, both geologic features were shaped by the same cataclysmic uplifting 100 million years ago. Millennia of wind, snow and eons of wind blown sand have blasted across their contours. These were the tools that sculpted the outstanding formations of weathered granite in the Alabama's.