Cuckoo Rock EarthCache
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
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Come prepared to take about a 7 mile hike, round trip, with a considerable elevation change.
Park at the Creeper Trail parking area, and take the Iron Mountain trail.
Along the way you will be treated to three of DMflyer's excellent caches;
The Cuckoo # 1
The Bear Went Over The Mountain, and
Old Dm Has Gone Cuckoo # 2
During the middle Ordovician Period (about 496-440 million years ago), a change in plate motions set the stage for the first Paleozoic mountain building event (Taconic orogeny) in North America. The once-quiet Appalachian passive margin changed to a very active plate boundary when a neighboring oceanic plate, the Iapetus, collided with and began sinking beneath the North American craton. With the birth of this new subduction zone, the early Appalachians were born. Along the continental margin, volcanoes grew, coincident with the initiation of subduction. Thrust faulting uplifted and warped older sedimentary rock laid down on the passive margin. As mountains rose, erosion began to wear them down. Streams carried rock debris down slope to be deposited in nearby lowlands. The Taconic Orogeny was just the first of a series of mountain building plate collisions that contributed to the formation of the Appalachians, culminating in the collision of North America and Africa.
Iron Mountain, unlike it’s neighbors White Top and Mount Rogers is not of volcanic origin, but rather the result of the uplifting of this older sedimentary rock. Cuckoo Rock is the summit of Iron Mountain laid bare by millions of years of erosion.
To post a find on this EarthCache you will need to:
1) Estimate the height of the rock at the posted coordinates.
2) Estimate the width of the rock.
3) Give your GPSr elevation reading at the posted coordinates
4) (Optional) Post a picture of yourself with your GPSr at the posted coordinates.
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