Educational Trail Rotava
Rotava Sun Stones
The situation map
The Rotavské Sluňáky (“Rotava Sun Stones“) is a folk name for scattered quartzite boulders and slabs of quartzite, which cover the forested plain between the Varhany and Rotava part of the Růžové (“Rose“) Valley. Sluňáky are composed of white, gray or yellowish quartz. The wind and water erosion gave the isolated boulders typical cavernous appearance and velvety, sometimes almost glassy, pitted and grooved surface.
The “Sun Stones” originated in older Tertiary period. When local granite weathered to kaolin, loosed silica precipitated into the pores and cracks of weathering horizon just below the surface. Soft soils and sands were cemented and solidified to a hard crust. Remnants of this around one meter thick crust cover even now, after 35 million years, the Earth’s surface. While the crust is strongly disturbed by erosion, the almost indestructible quartzite blocks peep from forested plateau or are moved by gravity down the slope into the valley of the Rotavský Stream. Previously, local people manufactured millstones from “Sun Stones” or used them as a building stone.
