5/6/23: The final piece of Halite has been taken from this geocache (despite explicit instructions not to take the final rock from any of the caches in this series); there is unfortunately no more Halite to see here. You can see pictures of the original contents of this cache, and read more about the rocks, below. Tradeables are now permitted in this cache.
During the great quarantine clean of 2020, I discovered my rock collection, assembled over years of studying geology in college and just picking up cool rocks along the way. Having way more rocks than we knew what to do with, we thought it would be fun to share them with fellow geocachers in a new series along the Merrimack River: the rock collection! These 15 caches are hidden in a linear fashion along a portion of the Bay Circuit Trail which can be walked or biked, mostly across AVIS's Deer Jump Reservation (and a couple other reservations as well). The containers vary in size, but each should be an easy find. Each one highlights a different really cool rock. Tradeables may not be left in these caches, though if you collect rocks yourself you can keep a rock from some (but not all) of these caches.
Devil's Golfcourse
Photo credit Don Geyer, mountainscenes.com
Devil's Golfcourse is a halite formation found in Death Valley, California. It is essentially a dried up ancient lake bed. Because death valley is lower than sea level, water entering into the valley has nowhere to flow out and remains stagnant until it evaporates. When the water in this lake evaporated, it left behind a thick layer of salt that had been carried into the valley over the years, disolved in the water. This salt remained on the valley floor solidified into halite (a solid rock form of salt) where subsequent years of wind and rain have disolved the rock into beautiful and rugged pinnacle formations. The national park service once claimed that "only the devil could play golf here," leading to the name "Devil's Golfcourse".
During a college geology trip, I hiked across Devil's Golfcourse with a team of students using sonar to measure the depth of the salt and sediment in the valley. We also collected a few broken pieces of halite. If you were to lick these rocks (but don't, please...) they would taste like salt. Also do your best to keep the inside of this container dry; as we all know, salt disolves, and these rocks won't last long in a wet container.
