Naukluft Mountains - Middle of Nowhere EarthCache
Hidden : 8/16/2013
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
4 out of 5

Size: Size: not chosen (not chosen)

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Geocache Description:

One of the oldest geological formations of the earth

Geology of the Naukluft Mountains

The Naukluft Mountains are part of the Great Escarpment, plateau edge of southern Africa that separates the region’s highland interior plateau from the fairly narrow coastal strip.
It is one of the oldest geologic formations of the earth. I consist of stone material which is more than two and half billion years old.
The Great Escarpment itself  was formed about 120 Mio years ago, when the primal continent "Gondwana" broke.

What was Gondwana? Gondwana was a "supercontinent". This supercontinent consisted amongst others of the actuel area of Africa and South America. Yes, imagine, you could have walked from Namibia to Brazil or Uruguay ;-)
But what happened 120 Million years ago? The tectonic plate that is known today  as "Africa", drifted in northerly direction while "South America" went westwards. This sounds unbelievable when we look at a globe and see how far way these tectonic plates drifted. If you look at a globe or a world map you see that still today the shapes of the continents South America and Africa fit almost perfectly to each other like a puzzle. See the map montage below.

Shape of continents

These plate tectonic forces stretched the continent, resulting in a depression of large areas, like the Kalahiri. Particulary, the area along the breaking edge was depressed. This formed the relatively low area of the Namib Desert, as we know it today. The Naukluft mountains were not subject to this depression, and thus, the resulting fault forms one part of the Great Escarpment.

Erosion is the reason why the area of the Naukluft Mountains is broken up and deep valleys have been formed. Erosion is also the reason why the Great Escaprment is moving slowly, very slowly eastwards.

Your Hike

When you hike the Waterkloof Trail to get to the cache location, you will see numerous canyons filled with cristal-clear water. Over the almost one million years, several broad and deep canyons have been formed by erosion in east-west direction. This gives you an impression of the age of the Naukluft Mountains, you become witness of a millions of years lasting geological process.

Waterkloof Mountain
On top of the Waterkloof mountain you will feel like being in the middle of nowhere.

Canyon
Canyons filled with cristal-clear waters!

Landscape Waterkloof
What a landscape!

Fish River Canyon
The Fish River Canyon: second biggest canyon of the world. Mainly formed by erosion.. (Fish River Canyon is way south of the cache location) (Picture source: Wikipedia.org)

Questions

Before you log this earth cache, please send me an answer on the following two questions:
1.  Are you in a large flat landscape or is the plateau broken by valleys?
2.  What do you think is the reason for the shape of the landscape you are in?
3.  At the listing coordinates there is a lot of rocks and stones (also a pile of stones collected by hikers) .
     Are these stones hard and solid or porose and spongy?

Optional tasks
Optionally, please insert a photo taken at the listing coordinates in your log.

Additional Hints (No hints available.)



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