Wendover Sedimentary Layers EarthCache
Wendover Sedimentary Layers
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(other)
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This cache can be found from I-80 for travelling cachers.
Lake Bonneville was a huge inland sea that covered most of Western Utah from about 32,000 years ago to 14,000 years ago.
Lake Bonneville is well known for its salt flats it left behind, but what is not as well known is it's other geological feature that can still be observed. This feature is its sedimentary layering.
All lakes leave some kind of sedimentary layering when they dry up. This happens because as the lake dries up the laylers of slite left behind dry up to form soft layers of stone. This forms the sedimentary layers.
Occasionally these layers are pushed underground by seismic action and submitted to extreme heat and pressure. Depending on how long the rock is subjected to this it may harden to form a harder sedimentary rock or form a completely new metamorphic rock. After this stage in the sedimentary rocks life one of two things will happen. Either the Rocks will continue to be pushed deeper into the earth and melt into magma, or it will be pushed up back to the crust. Eventually weathering may expose the rock, or it will stay underground. The chances that such a rock will make it back to the surface in an inhabited area are astronomical. That is what makes this location very unique. The rocks are from lake bonneville, so they were not 'cooked' long enough to metamorphosis completely into a metamorphic rock, with most of it still consisting of sedimentary stones.
The terrain is a 4 if you hike out to the cache on the local hiking/ off-roading trails, or a 1 if you do it as a drie by on highway 80.
To get credit for this earthcache email me the answers to the following questions:
1. The GC code and name of this cache.
2. The number of people in your group.
3. Does the top of the hill appear to have the layering or not, suggesting that it was once an island in Lake Bonneville or not?
4. Are the exposed sedimentary formations made completely out of sedimentary sotne or has some of it metamorphosised?
5. Based on your answer to question 4, if some of the rock is metamorphed, is it the darker or the lighter portions of the formation?
Good Luck and Happy Caching!
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)