PUZZLE: Each question's answer fulfills part of the actual physical coordinates, in order.
1. Colorado is known for its many ________ers. (Decode)
2. The # of main/basic rock types?
3. Initially a molten mineral "soup", this material cooled and hardened to form what is known as ________rock that geologists have dated at 1.7 billion years in this area. A tremendous amount of erosion has stripped away the overlying sediments to expose this ancient mountain core. (Use the first letter of this rock type and decode)
4. How many # of this prominent west-of-Boulder visual geologic feature?
5. A huge, inland sea began to move into the Boulder area approximately 135 million years ago, and its sandy beaches hardened to form the Dakota sandstone, or _________. Undulating ripple marks "frozen" in the rock, are a sure sign that Boulder was once coastal property. The National Center for Atmospheric Research sits atop this formation, and the Dakota sandstone forms the first ridge that you encounter west of Boulder (First letter of missing word, decode)
6. Boulder County has a long and colorful history of mining, including the discovery of ________ in 1859 12 miles west of Boulder. (Use the first letter of this mineral)
7. The pinkish-gray rock that is exposed in the rugged cliffs and boulders at the summit of Flagstaff Mountain. Known as the Boulder Creek ________, this rock is the oldest found in the Boulder area. (Use the first letter of this missing rock name)
8. Two great geographic provinces come together in the Boulder area. The _________ province is the Great Plains, and the ___________ province in the Rocky Mountains. The north-south front where the 2 meet is called the Front Range. (The first letters of missing words, decode one of them)
9. University of Colorado building are made of Lyons sandstone, a lovely salmon-colored rock that is valued for its hardness and tendency to break off in smooth, flat slabs. The rock hardened from finely textured sediments that were deposited as the ___________ Rocky Mountain Range continued to erode. Sand dunes and beach deposits formed here approximately 250 million years ago when Boulder was a hot, arid desert adjacent to a wide shallow sea to the east. (The first letter of missing word, decode)
10. Zero
11. The # of key traits or characteristics that can be used to identify rocks
12. _________, including Fluorspar and Tungsten, were extracted from “hard rock” mines in the granite and metamorphic rocks west of Boulder. (Use the first letter of the missing word)
13. Null
14. “Oh”
15. Much of eastern Boulder County is underlain by extensive beds of _______, occurring in the Laramie Formation of the Upper Cretaceous age, and mined near the town of Marshall. (The first letter of missing word, decode)
12/17/2018 By jasperdakota Thanks for the fun puzzle cache! Somehow missed this nice puzzle when it came out and just recently discovered it. SL.
10/20/2018 By sleuthers Thanks for a fun and educational puzzle! It took a little while to solve but in the end I was comfortable with my answers. The location looked good on google maps. I went to the location this afternoon and looked a bit but didn’t see the cache. Without confirmed coordinates I was uncomfortable poking around on someone’s front yard. So I knocked on the front door and luckily the cache owner was in and showed me to the cache. Thanks for your help. I would suggest adding a coordinate checker to the cache page. Cheers
A bolder Boulder boulder
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