This cache is in an Arroyo: A dry narrow desert gully with
steep walls and a firm flat gravel strewn floor.
A wheelchair can get within 30 feet of the cache - You will
need an AB to reach the cache. H13153
When we placed this cache it had 3 items for children and 3 for
adults. A travel bug and geo coin will be added at a later date. A
letterbox will be placed in an adjacent area.
Geology Info....
California is divided into “geomorphic provinces,” The City of
Palm Springs is located across two physiographic areas, the
Colorado Desert Province and the Peninsular Ranges Province.
Palm Springs is located in the Salton Trough a flat-lying valley
floor which is a narrow tectonic depression between the Pacific and
American Plates.
The City of Palm Springs is directly on top of this plate
boundary, with the southern part located on the Pacific Plate,
which is moving northwesterly (relative to the North American
Plate), at about 50 millimeters per year. The majority of active
faults are located in the northern portion of the City. The San
Andreas Fault is a major strike-slip fault that has been
seismically active and slowly rising in the past 1.0 to 2.5 million
years.
The mountain ranges south and west of Palm Springs are composed
of Granitic and metamorphic basement rock that have been sheared
and fractured under the strain of tectonic movement. The intrusions
are Mylonite Pleistocene (recent glaciations) and late Pliocene
sediments.
The coarse, poorly sorted sands and gravels at the base of the
mountains and in the canyons that drain the San Jacinto and Santa
Rosa Mountains, in the desert washes, are referred to as alluvial
fan deposits.
The desert floor in the Palm Springs area is about 400 feet
above sea level. San Jacinto Mountain is 10,804 feet. This is one
of the greatest changes in elevation in North America. The extreme
topographic relief between the valley and the surrounding mountains
is responsible for the great thickness of alluvial deposits along
the valley floor (almost 4 miles deep).
The south end of the Coachella Valley is 227 feet below sea
level. Conchilla is a Spanish word for the small white snail shells
found in the valley's sandy soil, vestiges of a lake which dried up
over 3,000 years ago.