REGISTRATION OPENS SOON

This 1-day field hosted by the RMS-SEPM takes participants to explore the ancient landscapes of the Colorado Front Range with a full-day excursion divided into two half-day stops designed to be accessible and affordable. This trip includes visits to classic sites such as Red Rocks and Dinosaur Ridge.

DETAILS

Morning

-    7:45 am: Meet at Lot Q on the west side of Colorado School of Mines campus. Bus leaves at 8:00 am for Red Rocks Park Upper South Lot.

-    8:30 – 9:00 am. Pennsylvanian – Permian geologic overview at Upper South Lot

-    9:00 am – 12:00pm Walk exposures of Fountain – Lyons Fm. along Trading Post Trail (gravel) for ~1.5 miles and connecting trail to Morrison Elementary school

Afternoon

-    12:15 pm: meet for lunch at the Martin Lockley Discovery Center (or another suitable outdoor lunch spot nearby). Jurassic – Cretaceous geologic overview

-    1:00 pm: Shuttle to Dinosaur Ridge West (Jurassic) Trailhead across Hog Back Rd.

-    1:00 pm – 3:30 pm: walk dinosaur ridge trail with Dino ridge representatives (~ 1 mile, paved)

-    3:30 pm: bus pickup from east side of Alameda road

-    3:30 – 3:45 pm drive back to Mines Lot Q

REGISTRATION OPENS SOON

The Raton Basin records an unusual range of geologic treasures, all recorded at the Laramide turn from Cretaceous to Paleocene time.  It archives a history of vast coal swamps and a rich fossil flora that is preserved at the close of the age of Dinosaurs and the dawn of the rainforest rebound.  Vast distributive fluvial systems fill this emerging foreland basin with a wide diversity of fluvio-lacustrine systems.  On this day trip from Denver we will visit a wealth of must-see geology.  Stops will include the thick coals and that made this basin the heart of Colorado coal country in the early 1900’s, and the cultural relics of this by-gone era.  Incised valleys and the architectures of both lower- and upper-flow regime fluvial systems are both well represented.  We will see one of the few accessible Cretaceous-Paleocene boundaries showing the fallout layer marking the end of the Mesozoic.  The basin also has one of the few complete depositional stratigraphic suites of a humid terminal splay system.  This trip is a must for sedimentary fans and anyone with the paleo bug.

DETAILS

Starting point – The SEPM convention site in Golden 8:00 am

Ending point – The SEPM convention site in Golden 8:00 pm

-    Proposed stops The King Coal Exposure near Segundo: 

• The Terminal Splay deposits near Segundo. 
• The old coke works near Cokedale.
• The K-T boundary in Trinidad Lake State Park.

REGISTRATION OPENS SOON

Two principal themes of the trip are: (1) to observe the characteristics of a wide variety of sedimentary environments and lithofacies in the Green River fluvial and paleo-lake system, including examples of siliciclastic and carbonate reservoirs, and oil shale; and (2) to compare these outcrop observations with subsurface data from the Uinta and Piceance basins. Continuous outcrops in western Colorado and east-central Utah expose the Eocene-aged Wasatch and Green River formations which were deposited during the lead up to and through the Eocene Climate Optimum; and reflect the interplay of tectonics and climate.

This three-day field trip will begin with a drive from Golden to Vernal, UT with overview stops in Rifle and at the overlook to Hells Hole Canyon to introduce the Green River lacustrine system and the underlying Wasatch fluvial system. The second day of the field trip will visit world-class outcrops in the eastern Uinta basin of Colorado and eastern Utah and will examine cyclically deposited paleo-lake siliciclastics and carbonates. The fluvial and floodplain facies of the Wasatch, the mixed littoral-sublittoral carbonate and shale of the Uteland Butte Member of the Green River, and mixed facies of the upper Green River Formation, including microbialites and the organic-rich profundal Mahogany oil shale will be observed. The final day of the trip will visit the lake margin wave-dominated siliciclastics and closing lake arkosic coarse silicilastics of the Green River Formation in the western Piceance basin, followed by a return to Golden.