Well - We've submitted our First Earth Cache ever - so let's keep our fingers crossed that they accept it.. lol

A lot of the Princeton Area (Nicola Group) was developed during the Upper Triassic Period. This occured between the Palaeozoic & Mesozoic Periods.

This resulted in quite a varicoloured lava; consisting of argillite, tuff, limestone, chlorite, sericite schist.

The area we've brought you to was developed primarily at that time. Nearby at the Belfort Caches and the City of Princeton itself was developed during the Miocene or earlier area - (Cenozoic Period) in that area you will find mainly shale, sandstone and conglomerate, coal along with Varicoloured andesite and basalt.

(Wikipedia) Sericite is a fine grained mica, either muscovite, illite, or paragonite. Sericite is a common alteration mineral of orthoclase or plagioclase feldspars in areas that have been subjected to hydrothermal alteration typically associated with copper, tin, or other hydrothermal ore deposits. Sericite also occurs as the fine mica that gives the sheen to phyllite and schistose metamorphic rocks.

A schist is a group of medium-grade metamorphic rocks, chiefly notable for the preponderance of lamellar minerals such as micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite, and others. Quartz often occurs in drawn-out grains to such an extent that a particular form called quartz schist is produced. By definition, schist contains more than 50% platy and elongated minerals, often finely interleaved with quartz and feldspar. Schist is often garnetiferous.

The individual mineral grains in schist, drawn out into flaky scales by heat and pressure, can be seen by the naked eye. Schist is characteristically foliated, meaning the individual mineral grains split off easily into flakes or slabs. The word schist is derived from the Greek word s???e?? meaning "to split", which is a reference to the ease with which schists can be split along the plane in which the platy minerals lie.

Most schists have been derived from clays and muds which have passed through a series of metamorphic processes involving the production of shales, slates and phyllites as intermediate steps. Certain schists have been derived from fine-grained igneous rocks such as basalts and tuffs. Most schists are mica schists, but graphite and chlorite schists are also common.

ARgillite - An argillite is a fine-grained sedimentary rock composed predominantly of indurated clay particles. Argillites are basically lithified muds and oozes. They contain variable amounts of silt-sized particles. The argillites grade into shale when the fissile layering typical of shale is developed. Another name for poorly lithified argillites is mudstone. These rocks, although variable in composition, are typically high in aluminium and silica with variable alkali and alkaline earth cations. The term pelitic or pelite is often applied to these sediments and rocks. Metamorphism of argillites produces slate, phyllite, and pelitic schist.

One type of Tuff is a Welded Tuff - Welded tuff is a pyroclastic rock, of any origin, that was sufficiently hot at the time of deposition to weld together. Strictly speaking, if the rock contains scattered pea-sized fragments or fiamme in it, it is called a welded lapilli-tuff. Welded tuffs (and welded lapilli-tuffs) can be of fallout origin, or deposited from pyroclastic density currents, as in the case of ignimbrites. During welding, the glass shards and pumice fragments adhere together (necking at point contacts), deform, and compact together, resulting in a 'eutaxitic fabric' (see image and contrast with the ash shapes in unwelded tuff).

Welded ignimbrites can be highly voluminous, such as the Lava Creek Tuff erupted from Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming 640,000 years ago. Lava Creek Tuff is known to be at least 1000 times as large as the deposits of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and it had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 8—greater than any eruption known in the last 10,000 years. The intensity of welding may decrease towards the upper margin of a deposit, towards areas in which the deposit is thinner and with distance from source. Welded tuff is commonly rhyolitic in composition, but examples of all compositions are known.

Lime Stone - Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite (calcium carbonate: CaCO3). Like most other sedimentary rocks, limestones are composed of grains; however, most grains in limestone grains are skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera. Other carbonate grains comprising limestones are ooids, peloids, intraclasts, and extraclasts. Some limestones do not consist of grains at all and are formed completely by the chemical precipitation of calcite or aragonite. i.e. travertine.

The solubility of limestone in water and weak acid solutions leads to karst landscapes. Regions overlying limestone bedrock tend to have fewer visible groundwater sources (ponds and streams), as surface water easily drains downward through joints in the limestone. While draining, water and organic acid from the soil slowly (over thousands or millions of years) enlarges these cracks; dissolving the calcium-carbonate and carrying it away in solution. Most cave systems are through limestone bedrock.

Chlorite - Chlorite is commonly found in igneous rocks as an alteration product of mafic minerals such as pyroxene, amphibole, and biotite. Chlorite is a common mineral associated with hydrothermal ore deposits and commonly occurs with epidote, sericite, adularia and sulfide minerals. In this environment chlorite may be a retrograde metamorphic alteration mineral of existing ferromagnesian minerals, or it may be present as a metasomatism product via addition of Fe, Mg, or other compounds into the rock mass.

Chlorite is also a common metamorphic mineral, usually indicative of low-grade metamorphism. It is the diagnostic species of the zeolite facies and of lower greenschist facies. It occurs in the quartz, albite, sericite, chlorite, garnet assemblage of pelitic schist. Within ultramafic rocks, metamorphism can also produce predominantly clinochlore chlorite in association with talc. Experiments indicate that chlorite can be stable in peridotite of the Earth's mantle above the ocean lithosphere carried down by subduction, and chlorite may even be present in the mantle volume from which island arc magmas are generated.

Sometimes Giant Bolders fall from where they are perched - the one side of you there is a small "mountain" to the otherside you have a flat Meadow, on the other side of the mountain is the Valley that contains Princeton, Allison Lake and many other small lakes. What lies before you is a very large Boulder that no longer is attached to the mountain it came from.

Please post a photo of you and your gps at the Rock.

In order to claim the Earthcache:

1. What you think is the height of the Rock in front of you
2. What material you believe the rock is made of
3. What color you get when you wet the rock
4. What color you get when you scratch the Rock