It really is a testament to the amount of snow and the cold spring that our first summit (and it really wasn't a real mountain) was on July 1st. Even now, many trailheads are not open and if they are the amounts of snow, especially in the sub-alpine forest is still pretty deep. We had tried other peaks earlier and were unsuccessful on everyone. So Twin Peaks right outside of Ouray was our first summit of 2011.
The summit rock is part of the San Juan formation or just the San Juan Tuff a volcanic-clastic sedimentary rock. Within this impressively thick formation (3000 feet in places) , you can identify breccia clasts from long ago pyroclastic flows and thick welded tuff segments resulting from falling ash. A cool place!
The "little sister" right before the last big climb. Even without zooming in you can see the brecciated surface.
There is still a bit of snow in the high country
A long way down to the City of Ouray CO. This was a fun 3000 foot climb.
An close up showing the volcanic-clasts within the matrix. Unfortunately there is quite a bit of biology hiding the rock details.
2 comments:
Why are you hatin on the biology? No more organic sedimentary rocks for you!
Ed;
Sorry to be off topic.
As fellow geoblogger (who can't quite figure out Twitter), I am seeking info on Ouray and Silverton geology for labeling educational photos.
http://geosciblog2.blogspot.com/
jsummerour@hotmail.com
Thanks. Joe
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