- A list of the people that you are submitting the answer for. Also include the GC#/Name Please submit the answers and the logs close in time, or your logs may be deleted.
- Looking at the reef and the flatirons, are the flatirons steeper to the north or to the south?
- Using the information from #2, do you believe that the swell (before it eroded away) would be higher to the north or lower than the swell to the south.
- Are there more flatirons to the north or south of you? What are the differences.
- Add a photo of you from the location or of an identifiable item (paper with trackable name). Posting a photo pulled from the internet, or photoshopped will result in instant deletion.
The Reef
To the west you can see the reef. Actually it is part of the San Rafael Swell. Think of this area like a giant bubble that formed in the ground. Then a giant lawn mower chopped the top off. The stone under was softer and eroded away. To give you an idea of how high the swell grew look at how steep the hills lifted. The stone that is normally flat is tilted at an angle. The area from north to south is referred to as the San Rafael Reef. It runs about 75 miles long.
Because of the lift you are seeing that the older sandstone is actually older than what is in the area around you. Some of the sandstone spires you have passed are from the end of the Jurassic period and date from 145 million years ago. However the high parts of the reef that you can see in front of you run to about 190 million years old. Those run about 1500 to 2000 feet above where you are standing now.
The swell appears to have pushed some of the stone layers nearly vertically where it swelled to its highest point.
The Flatirons
When you have a steep slope that is broken up like this, it is referred to as flatirons. Think of when you set an iron down. It is usually tipped back and has a triangular point to it. These hills are said to resemble a row of "flat irons". The hard stone is weathered nearly flat and comes to a triangular point. You can see more of this to the north. The term is used to help descibe the look and the shape, these are reffered to as a landform among geologists.
The flatirons here are the remains of the swell, and have eroded in some parts to form the triangles that are familiar with the term flatirons. There are some parts that have eroded to form them in a repeated fashon, and others have not eroded to the point where the teeth of the flatirons would appear.