2025 Colorado Scientific Society Field Trip

Coal Creek Canyon: Coal Creek Quartzite, Faults, and Structure
CSS No Moss Gathering

Sunday, November 2 2025 9:00 am – 1:00 pm

Where: We met at Plainview Road parking lot, north off Coal Creek Canyon Rd (CO 72) and west of CO 93

Trip guides: Ned Sterne, Yvette Kuiper and Bob Raynolds, possibly others.

Brief Trip description:
Come see some of the classic outcrops of the Front Range hiding in plain sight. We will carpool as practical, then head up Coal Creek Canyon to view either the best or the second best fault exposure in our region. (You can help us decide) Located strategically behind a coffee shop this will be our stop one. Ned and others will describe the structural geology of this portion of the Front Range.

Then we will proceed down the canyon making several stops to see one of the most distinctive rock units in Central Colorado, the 1.7 Billion year old Coal Creek Quartzite. Famous as a lag pebble in such units as the gold-bearing Castle Rock Conglomerate, this resistant steel grey quartzite and stretched pebble conglomerate is well known to students of the Denver Basin. Its setting in a syncline cut by the canyon is spectacular. We will make several stops, including in a new development on the Golden Fault system where Ned will describe the results from a geology research trench that the builders kindly excavated for his inspection a few years ago.

Geology of Eldorado Springs 7.5 min. quad USGS_B-1221-D (12.6 MB)