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Salto Collato Falls
Here is another easy-to-find waterfall in the central/west region of Puerto Rico. Salto Collazo is located in San Sebastian, right along a bridge on the main road as you are going east out of town. It’s impossible to miss, and oh so pretty. Salto Collazo is located east of San Sebastian on the way to Lares on Route 111 at KM 26.8. It’s right near the intersection of Route 111 and Road 448.
As you cross the bridge the waterfall will be right there. The coordinates will take you to the middle of the bridge where you can take pictures and answer the required questions. If you would like, you can walk down the path to the base of the falls. Be careful, the rocks are slippery.
If you’re more adventurous, take a peek over the other side of the bridge. I just happened to do this, and guess what? The other side has a really tall waterfall. The bad part is, it is NOT easy to get to. But after getting a glimpse of what could be another beautiful waterfall, we were up for the challenge.
There was no way that I could see to get down from the main road, so we ended up driving down the side road, parking, and then making our way through the forest to the falls. After a few slips and a little bit of back-tracking, we eventually got down to the river. Once we got there, we turned right and walked upstream to the waterfall.
This waterfall is tall — maybe 100 feet. It drops into a small pool.
There is parking available on the side of the road on both sides of the bridge. Be care on the roads, the traffic comes around the sharp curves pretty fast.
Geology:
Poorly lithified to unconsolidated carbonate and clastic sedimentary rocks of Tertiary (Oligocene to Pliocene) and Quaternary (Pleistocene to Holocene) age compose the South Coast aquifer and the North Coast limestone aquifer system of Puerto Rico; poorly lithified to unlithified carbonate rocks of late Tertiary (early Miocene to Pliocene) age make up the Kingshill aquifer of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The South Coast aquifer, North Coast limestone aquifer system, and Kingshill aquifer are the most areally extensive and function as the major sources of ground water in the U.S. Caribbean Islands Regional Aquifer-System Analysis (CI-RASA) study area. In Puerto Rico’s South Coast ground-water province, more than 1,000 meters of clastic and carbonate rocks of Oligocene to Pliocene age infill the South Coast Tertiary Basin. The pattern of lithofacies within this basin appears to have been controlled by changes in base level that were, at times, dominated by tectonic movement (uplift and subsidence), but were also influenced by eustasy. Deposition of the 70-kilometer long and 3- to 8-kilometer wide fan-delta plain that covers much of the South Coast ground-water province occurred largely in response to glacially-induced changes in sea level and climate during the Quaternary period. Tectonic movement played a much less important role during the Quaternary. The North Coast ground-water province of Puerto Rico is underlain by a homoclinal coastal plain wedge of carbonate and siliciclastic rocks that infill the North Coast Tertiary Basin and thicken to more than 1,700 meters. A thin basal siliciclastic sequence of late Oligocene age is overlain by a thick section of mostly carbonate rocks of Oligocene to middle Miocene age. Globigerinid limestone of late Miocene to Pliocene age crops out and lies in the shallow subsurface areas of northwestern Puerto Rico. Oligocene to middle Miocene age rocks tentatively can be divided into five depositional sequences and associated systems tracts; these rocks record carbonate and minor siliciclastic deposition that occurred in response to changes in relative sea level. The Cibao Formation represents the most complex of these sequences and contains a varied facies of carbonate, mixed carbonate-siliciclastic, and siliciclastic rocks that reflect differential uplift, subsidence, and transgression of the sea.
Waterfalls
A waterfall is usually a geological formation resulting from water, often in the form of a stream, flowing over an erosion-resistant rock formation that forms a sudden break in elevation or nick point.
Some waterfalls form in mountain environments where the erosive water force is high and stream courses may be subject to sudden and catastrophic change. In such cases, the waterfall may not be the end product of many years of water action over a region, but rather the result of relatively sudden geological processes such as landslides, faults or volcanic action.
Typically, a river flows over a large step in the rocks which may have been formed by a fault line. Over a period of years, the edges of this shelf will gradually break away and the waterfall will steadily retreat upstream, creating a gorge of recession. Often, the rock stratum just below the more resistant shelf will be of a softer type, meaning undercutting, due to splash back, will occur here to form a shallow cave-like formation known as a rock shelter or plunge pool under and behind the waterfall. Eventually, the outcropping, more resistant cap rock will collapse under pressure to add blocks of rock to the base of the waterfall. These blocks of rock are then broken down into smaller boulders by attrition as they collide with each other, and they also erode the base of the waterfall by abrasion, creating a deep plunge pool.
Streams become wider shallow just above waterfalls due to flowing over the rock shelf, and there is usually a deep pool just below the waterfall because of the kinetic energy of the water hitting the bottom.
Waterfalls can occur along the edge of glacial trough, whereby a stream or river flowing into a glacier continues to flow into a valley after the glacier has receded or melted. The large waterfalls in Yosemite Valley are examples of this phenomenon. The rivers are flowing from hanging valleys.
Types of Waterfalls
Block:Water descends from a relatively wide stream or river.
Cascade: Water descends a series of rock steps.
Cataract: A large waterfall
Fan: Water spreads horizontally as it descends while remaining in contact with bedrock.
Horsetail: Descending water maintains some contact with bedrock.
Plunge: Water descends vertically, losing contact with the bedrock surface.
Punchbowl: Water descends in a constricted form, and then spreads out in a wider pool.
Segmented: Distinctly separate flows of water form as it descends.
Tiered: Water drops in a series of distinct steps or falls.
Multi-Step: A series of waterfalls one after another of roughly the same size each with its own sunken plunge pool.
To log this earth cache you must post a picture of you with your GPS with the falls in the background(optional) and Email me the answers to the following questions...
1) Approximately how high are the falls?
2) Approximately how wide are the falls?
3) What type of Waterfall?
4) During the Quaternary period, what movement played a much less important role?
5) What type of rock is the waterfall formed from?
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)