Elephant Rock Granite
Granite. Mesoproterozoic, about 1,600 to 1,000 million years old. 41 crags on this site have their map point on it.
What the map says
Gray to grayish-pink, coarse-grained, massive to moderately foliated, porphyritic monzogranite and subordinate granodiorite. In the Harvard Lakes quadrangle, unit contains about 30–35 percent quartz, 25–30 percent plagioclase (oligoclase), 30–32 percent microcline, 6–12 percent biotite, 1–2 percent sphene, and trace amounts of apatite, zircon, and opaque minerals (Kellogg and others, 2013). Microcline phenocrysts are as long as 3 cm. Commonly weathers into distinctive rounded, reddish-brown tors with intervening areas of reddish-brown grus. Forms large batholith east of Arkansas River that extends from the northern Harvard Lakes quadrangle (Kellogg and others, 2013) as far south as the northern Salida East quadrangle (Wallace and others, 1997), a distance of about 42 km. Referred to as “granodiorite” several quadrangles south of Harvard Lakes quadrangle. Unit includes numerous outcrops of similar coarse-grained granite interpreted as blocks incorporated into Langhoff Gulch Granite (Ygl) in South Peak quadrangle. Formerly suspected to be equivalent to Paleoproterozoic Henry Mountain Granite near Gunnison (DeWitt and others, 2010), but a U-Pb zircon age from about 4 km north of Buena Vista in an abandoned train tunnel just south of a pinnacle named Elephant Rock, located atNE1⁄4 sec. 31, T. 13 S., R. 78 W. and composed of Elephant Rock Granite is 1,436±8 Ma (Moscati and others, 2017). A U-Pb date from a roadcut on Highway 285 east of Buena Vista is 1,434±8 Ma (Moscati and others, 2017). The name Elephant Rock Granite is herein formalized and location X (38°52 38"N., 106°08 44"W. on the USGS Harvard Lakes quadrangle) is hereby designated as the type locality
1:100,000 sheet: Kellogg and others, 2017, U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3382 (41 crags). A contact line at that scale is about 100 m wide on the ground.
Served by Macrostrat (CC BY 4.0). The wording is the map's own, quoted as a fact about the mapped unit, not about any one wall.
Buena Vista
- *Arkansas Valley Bouldering East1 route and 105 boulder problems · *Arkansas Valley Bouldering · 8,303 ft · granite (another source)
- The River Chamber20 routes · River Chamber, The · 8,108 ft
- Turtle Rocks17 routes · Turtle Rocks, Baby Turtle, and The Corridor · 8,444 ft
- Pleasure Dome14 routes · 8,591 ft
- Transmitter Tower14 routes · 8,528 ft
- Climbing Area 5412 routes · 9,181 ft
- The Leaning Wall12 routes · Leaning Wall, The · 8,153 ft
- Pump Station12 routes · 8,466 ft
- Climbing Area 5510 routes · 9,416 ft
- The Rock Pile10 routes · Rock Pile, The · 9,370 ft
- Climbing Area 539 routes · 8,413 ft
- The Corridor9 routes · Turtle Rocks, Baby Turtle, and The Corridor · 8,240 ft
- Elephant Rock8 routes · 8,111 ft
- The Roost8 routes · Roost, The · 8,710 ft
- Split Rock8 routes · 8,439 ft
- Almost A Tunnel7 routes · 8,119 ft
- Poncho's Vista7 routes · 8,198 ft
- Chocolate Tower6 routes · 8,065 ft
- Climbing Area 575 routes · 9,044 ft
- Climbing Area 585 routes · 8,037 ft
- Climbing Area 605 routes · 8,518 ft
- Day Dream Crag5 routes · 9,144 ft
- Duck Wall5 routes · 8,548 ft
- Tool Wall / Tool Tower5 routes · 8,204 ft
- Buzzsaw Dome4 routes · 8,914 ft
- Climbing Area 624 routes · 8,718 ft
- Obscura4 routes · Lilliput · 9,199 ft
- Christmas Crag3 routes · 9,025 ft
- Climbing Area 563 routes · 8,317 ft
- Climbing Area 633 routes · 8,473 ft
- The Museum3 routes · Museum, The · 8,195 ft
- South Split Rock3 routes · 8,451 ft
- Cat's Claw Crag (C3)2 routes · 9,104 ft
- Water Front2 routes · 8,091 ft
- Americus Wall1 route · 8,290 ft
- Climbing Area 611 route · 8,574 ft
- Climbing Area 641 route · 8,778 ft
- Forgotten Wall1 route · 8,129 ft
- Small Packages1 route · Lilliput · 9,077 ft
- There is Spice to Life Tower.1 route · 8,828 ft
- Turbo Big Tower1 route · 8,729 ft