GC36V30 Snow Canyon Basalt (Earthcache) in Utah, United States created by The-MudSlingers

GC36V30 ▼

A cache by The-MudSlingers Message this owner

Hidden : 10/25/2011

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Geocache Description:

Located just outside the Snow Canyon park entrance on Johnson Canyon Trail
Parking is available right across the street from the trailhead.
To log this EarthCache please Email me the answers to the following questions. (DON'T POST WITH your LOG OR IT WILL BE DELETED)

PLEASE STAY ON THE TRAILS AS THERE IS NO REASON TO GO OFF OF THEM!

1: to the northeast of the trailhead is a large piece of basalt. estimate the size of it.
2: find a piece along the trail describe the weight and feel of the rock, do you see other minerals or rocks in it?. This is easy as its all over and can be found without leaving the trail.

Earth's Most Abundant Bedrock

Basalt underlies more of Earth's surface than any other rock type. Most areas within Earth's ocean basins are underlain by basalt. Although basalt is much less common on continents, lava flows and flood basalts underlie several percent of Earth's land surface. Basalt is a very important rock.

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey. According to the official definition, basalt is defined as an aphanitic igneous rock that contains, by volume, less than 20% quartz and less than 10% feldspathoid and where at least 65% of the feldspar is in the form of plagioclase.

On Earth, most basalt magmas have formed by decompression melting of the mantle. Basalt has also formed on Earth's Moon, Mars, Venus, and even on the asteroid Vesta. Source rocks for the partial melts probably include both peridotite and pyroxenite The crustal portions of oceanic tectonic plates are composed predominantly of basalt, produced from upwelling mantle below ocean ridges.

Vesicular texture is a volcanic rock texture characterized by a rock being pitted with many cavities (known as vesicles) at its surface and inside]. The texture is often found in extrusive aphanitic, or glassy, igneous rock. These vesicles form during the extrusion of magma to the surface; as the pressure decreases dissolved; magmatic gases are able to come out of solution, forming gas bubbles (the cavities) in the magma. When the magma is extruded as lava and cools the lava solidifies around the gas bubbles, preserving them as vesicles.

A related texture is amygdaloidal in which the volcanic rock, usually basalt or andesite, has cavities, or vesicles, that are filled with secondary minerals, such as zeolites, calcite, quartz, or chalcedony. Individual cavity fillings are termed amygdules (American usage), or amygdales (British usage). Sometimes these can be sources of semi-precious stones such as agate.

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Snow Canyon Basalt EarthCache

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