Pick up some of the white stones. They are stones that are not eroding, but being built.
- Are the rocks porous (will water soak into them)?
- Do they seem very hard and heavy or hollow/light?
- Do you think it is the sand that combined to make the stone? or is the calcium carbonate slowly building up? explain
If you look around this location you will see a number of white stones. The other cache (Stansbury Island by lv2wj) points you to information on the formation of ooilitc sand. I do not want to repeat much but I will review that a little.
Oolitic sand
Oolitic sand is formed in a calcium carbonate rich environment. Many of you may have made crystals as a kid. You keep dissolving sugar or salt into boiling water. When you hang a string in that, especially if you hang small particle in it it will start to form the crystals as it cools and evaporates. The sand here is white from the calcium that forms the shell. You may have noticed the dunes just south of here, west of the road.
Oolitic sand is similar. All the rivers and springs in the area carry small amounts of salt and calcium carbonate in the flows. Those minerals are dropped into the lake. Slowly the lake becomes saturated with salt and calcium carbonate. The Great Salt Lakee has large numbers of brine shrimp (sea monkeys for the older generation that may have bought some). By large numbers I mean trillions upon trillions. Small amounts of calcium carbonate can attach itself to that shrimp when it dies, its fecal matter, or dust particles. In certain shorelines areas high saturation of minerals, and warm temperatures will combine with the waves to toss those particles around start forming tiny sand grains. The combination of those actions cause layers after layers to build up over time. Until they are eventually dropped onto the shore.
Oolite
That sand can start to be pressed together. Cemented over time to form a solid piece. No longer Oolitic sand it is now called oolite as it bonds all those together into stone. If you look at these under a magnifying glass (or if you have really good eyes) you can see the tiny grains that form the ooilitc sand that bonds to make the rock.
Calcium Carbonate aka Tufa
The other option is there can be so much Calcium Carbonate that it starts to filter out. Usually it starts with some solid material as a base, and it starts to bond together. It can build two different ways. It can pick a piece of stone to form on or it can filter out and start to bond together.
Many of you have calcium carbonate in your home. It is used for upset stomachs under a number of different products names that if I use here I will be hunted down and roughed up by geocaching.
Results
The results are the white sand west of the road just south of here, and the slowly building up of the lake. Basically it is forming new limestone here, just as it did in the ancient oceans and leave us with the rock that is around us.
Where other beaches are eroding rocks, and sand is being washed down from the rivers, we see that this area is building itself. Rocks and sands are coming from the water.
Nearby you may find a large surface about 10 feet by 4 feet with waves in it that is a solid piece that has bonded into one and has grown over time. It even has wave ripples in it from the action of the water waves.