Another Mysterious Monolith Appears, This One Atop California’s Pine Mountain | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Joseph Curl.

    Another shiny monolith reminiscent of the one featured in "2001: A Space Odyssey" has appeared, this one on top of Pine Mountain in California.

    Dozens of hikers have trekked up to the top of the mountain in Atascadero, northwest of Los Angeles, to take pictures with the 10-foot shiny monolith, the Atascadero News reported.

    "The object was welded together at each corner, with rivets attaching the side panels to a likely steel frame inside. The top of the monument did not show any weld marks, and it appears to be hollow at the top, and possibly bottom," the paper wrote, estimating that it weighs 200 pounds.

    "The City of Atascadero was made aware of the object, and there is no current information about the future of the monument. Being that the obelisk is hundreds of pounds and not attached to the ground, it is possible to fall if pushed and The Atascadero News cautions hikers when near the object," wrote the News.

    The California monolith's appearance follows another that was found in remote wilderness late last month in Utah.

    That 10- to 12-foot shiny monolith was first discovered on Nov. 18. Utah's highway patrol shared a picture of the find on Instagram, along with the caption: "Counting big horn sheep with DWR this week. During the counts we came across this, in the middle of nowhere, buried deep in the rock. Inquiring minds want to know, what the heck is it? Anyone?"

    "The crew said there was no obvious indication of who might have put the monolith there," the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) said in a statement.

    But hikers Riccardo Marino and Sierra Van Meter, who went to the Utah site last Friday, discovered that the monolith had disappeared.

    Hoping to take some pictures, they drove eight hours to a trail that leads to the spot, located south of Moab and just east of Canyonlands National Park. "We're gonna get some sweet photos, potentially some alien-type photos with the ground. We're gonna have to cross through a little bit of a brush in Canyon country to get there, but without further ado, let's hike to the Utah monolith," Marino said on Instagram.

    Then they hiked to the site.

    "We believe we might be the first people to come to the Utah monolith and have it not be here anymore. Unfortunately. But what we do see, though, is someone wrote 'bye b****' and clearly took a pee on where the monolith once stood. On the ground here you can literally see fresh tracks of some kind of wheel that pulled this thing out of here. And we're literally walking down this trail," Marino said.

    Marino said sadly: "No longer is the Utah monolith standing at this point."

    Earlier this week, more details have emerged about the disappearance. Four men removed the monolith and hauled it away, an eyewitness claims, according to The New York Times.

    Ross Bernards, a 34-year-old photographer from Colorado, told the newspaper that he went to the site on Friday, hoping to get a glimpse of the monolith. He said he saw the men push the shiny structure to the ground, break it apart, and haul it away in a wheelbarrow.

    "As they walked off with the pieces, one of them said, 'Leave no trace,'" Bernards told the paper.