 | Gene and Sue were the only hikers to participate on Day 6 of the hike. They hit the trail at 8:35 a.m.
 | The trail starts out along Zuma Canyon. Sue has stopped to admire a flowering bush along the trail. The next picture shows a closeup of the flowers.
 | Closeup of the flowers on the bush in the previous photo.
 | After about a mile of hiking we came to this nice bridge across Zuma Creek.
 | Zuma Creek had a moderate amount of water flowing in it.
 | We had hiked about three quarters of the way before we stopped for a late lunch along Yerba Buena Road.
 | The Backbone Trail is not finished in this part of the Santa Monica Mountains, so we had to hike along the paved roads around the uncompleted segments. In this photo Sue is hiking along Yerba Buena Road near the end of the hike with Sandstone Peak in the background. Sandstone Peak will be our goal at the beginning of Day 7.
 | We reached our van, parked at the end of the hike, at 2:20 p.m. It was our earliest finishing time and we were in good spirits.
 | This succulent plant belonging to the genus Dudleya was common all along the trail. It is pretty even without its flowers, which bloom later in the year. It is rooted in the cracks of an exposure of the Conejo Volcanics and will serve to widen those cracks as it grows, thus making it a good example of biological weathering of rocks.
 | The Prickly Phlox, Leptodactylon californicum, which was seen on Day 5, was also common along the trail on Day 6.
 | Near the end of Day 6 we saw more Treasure Flowers, Gazania. Most of them were yellow like those seen on Day 4, but these two were a beautiful white and purple in color.
 | The hike starts in the Conejo Volcanics, but soon after starting the trail passes across the Malibu Bowl fault and down into the Lower Topanga Formation. Exposures along the trail are poor, but if one hikes north along Kanan Dume Road for a quarter mile before joining the trail, the Malibu Bowl fault is visible in this roadcut. The fault passes diagonally across the photo from upper left to lower right, separating the upper brown volcanic rocks of the Conejo Volcanics, about 17,000,000 years old, from the underlying dark gray shale of the Lower Topanga Formation, about 20,000,000 years old.
 | In a few places within the Lower Topanga Formation in this area, the moldic porosity of the sandstone, described on Day 5, reveals fossil molds of plant fragments and a small scallop.
 | A great deal of the Lower Topanga Formation in this vicinity is dark gray to black shale. This photo shows an exposure of the shale in a roadcut along Encinal Canyon Road. Note the thin limestone bed in the center that has been offset by a small fault.
 | In this photo taken along Little Sycamore Canyon Road, the dark, basaltic lava flow rocks of the Conejo Volcanics are intruded by a light-weathering diabase dike. Dikes such as this served as feeder fractures along which melted rock moved to the surface of the volcano to feed the lava flows that moved down the slopes of the volcano.
 | The Conejo Volcanics contain some sedimentary deposits of the Middle Topanga Formation within them, but they are not as abundant as they are farther toward the east. Shown here in a roadcut along Encinal Canyon Road are some shale beds and a mudflow deposit.
 | Cracks in the Conejo Volcanics in places are filled by mineral deposits precipitated out of the ground water. Shown here in a roadcut along Encinal Canyon Road are some cracks filled with the mineral calcite.
 | In the upper parts of the Conejo Volcanics are lava flow breccias of andesitic composition. Andesite is the type of volcanic rock that is found in the Andes volcanoes. This photo measures about 15 feet from top to bottom, so the large fragments shown are boulders of andesite that were incorporated into the lava flow.
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