Written in the Rocks Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Get out and stretch your legs from the Highway 50 drive with a short hike to this geocache at a great rest stop, picnic area, or overnight camping site.
Cache is located along the Hickison Petroglyphs Recreation Area trail in piñon-juniper habitat, but the petroglyphs aren't the only thing that's hot about this stop. Both welded and non-welded ash-flow tuff are the dominant rock types in the area and tell a tale of violent volcanic eruptions here about 23 million years ago. The soft, light-colored buff-pink rock in which the ancient peoples carved their signs is called an "ignimbrite" or ash-flow tuff and is part of a unit called the Bates Mountain Tuff. The tuff covers many square miles and the volcano that produced it spewed put more than 2000 times as much ash as Mount St. Helens did in its noted eruption in 1980. As you hike higher up the petroglyph trail, you will encounter harder, denser cliff-formimg rocks that are not so soft as these, but still retain a volcanic texture; these are welded tuffs and if you look closely at them, they contain flattened pumice fragments.
The exact location of the volcanic center, or caldera, that erupted to produce these tuffs 23 million years ago is unknown, but several similar calderas erupted huge sheets of ash-flow tuffs across Nevada in the time period between 40 and 20 million years ago. It was a hot time in Nevada!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Whfg unatvat nebhaq!
Treasures
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