2022 “No Moss” field trip: South Table Mountain, southeast side

Saturday, April 30, 2022, 9-11 a.m.

Trip Leader: Bob Raynolds, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

We were led by Dr. Bob Raynolds on a short hike to explore the section containing the K-T boundary (OK, I’ll be more correct and write K-Pg) on the southeast side of South Table Mountain. It’s the site where, in the Pg part of the Denver Formation strata, numerous tiny skull fragments of earliest Paleocene mammals have been found. The trip is billed as 2 hours, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. It’s just a fairly short walk to the trailhead, so if the discussion and observation of strata “goes on at great length” and you need to leave, it will be easy for anyone to walk back to the cars.

We met at the parking lot of Applewood Valley United Methodist Church (we had their “blessing” to park there!), 2035 Ellis St., Golden (at the end of W. 20th Ave., just west of Eldridge Street). Park in the lot on the south side of the church, closest to the ramp leading to the trailhead.

Our path took us up that ramp, to the Welch Ditch Trail, then north on it a short distance to where a dirt path leads up into a bowl in the “badlands” on the lower slope of South Table Mountain where lies the K-T boundary… somewhere in that exposed section. Bob, having worked on the Denver Museum’s Denver Basin project for many a year, had many things to say about the boundary section here and the Denver Formation and Denver Basin in general! They found fossil palm trees here.

Some of us followed the trail above the bowl up past the shoshonite caprock to the top of South Table after Bob Raynolds’ discussion.