This page contains pictures of an outcropping of grey rocks that appears in a line along the west side of Green Mountain in Lakewood, Colorado. Each picture is a linked to a higher resolution version of the same picture. Click on a picture to download other version. Additional photographs, maps and details will be added soon.
The rock of this outcropping is very crumbly sandstone in layers of different consistency. Some is medium-grained and some is very coarse. It includes conglomerates with embedded rocks up to an inch in diameter. All seems to crumble under light pressure. In some places there is nothing left of the outcropping but a dark pile of gravel. The sedimentary rock layers tilt slightly to the east but their tilt is much, much closer to horizontal than the rocks in the Dakota Hogback to the west.
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Link to Google Map View of Area |
This picture was taken from the Green Mountain hiking trail north of the outcropping. The camera is looking south. The arrows show the line of dark grey rocks sticking up from the surround terrain.
Where the outcropping is intact, it shows two parallel fractures regardless of the shape of the outcropping. The arrows mark these fractures in the most northerly large outcropping. The fractures are nearly perpendicular to the sedimentary layers of rock. The eroded eastern edge may mark the location of a third fracture parallel the the two marked. The camera is looking southwest.
Looking north over the same outcropping. The famous I-70 roadcut through the Dakota Hogback is visible in the distance.
The view north along the line of the outcropping. You can see that it has eroded away in several places.
The view south-southwest over the most southerly part of the outcropping visible. The north-south trending fractures are marked.
The southern end of the rock up close. Looking north.
The same rock from a bit further back. There seems to be little or no vertical displacement along these fractures.