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SITE GEOLOGY <br />The Powder Mountain Ranch property is located near the mouth <br />of Rapid Creek on a complex and deeply dissected alluvial fan <br />sequence which involves several hundred acres, Mesaverde <br />sandstone and shale crops out at several nearby locations. Coal <br />beds underneath the site have reportly been removed by extensive <br />mining operations which portal near the Colorado River. <br />The property is within a larger area mapped by the Colorado <br />Geological Survey as "A-2" on Plate 2 in the report "Mineral <br />Resources Survey of Mesa County". The symbol A-2 is described <br />as "alluvial fan, gravel, significant fines, decomposed or weak <br />rock, and/or calcium carbonate". A drawing adapted from this <br />Survey map is attached to this report. <br />Western Slope Flagstone Quarry No. 2 <br />Mr. Rudy Fontanari of Clifton, Colorado presently operates a <br />quarry on his nearby property to produce primarily gravel, <br />cobbles, and boulders in the southwest corner of Section 35, <br />T 10 S, R 98 W, Sixth Principal Meridian. This quarry is about <br />1,300 feet northeast of the subject Powder Mountain Ranch <br />property. The existing Western Slope Flagstone Quarry No. 2 <br />operates under current permits for an area of 9.55 acres from <br />the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board, Mesa County, and <br />other authorities. The materials from the quarry have commercial <br />value, after separation, for uses such as riprap, roadfill, <br />landscaping stone, and other construction needs. <br />Description of the Alluvial Fan Materials <br />Based on exposures in nearby roadcuts and excavation of four <br />test pits in February, 2000, the materials in the alluvial fans <br />are generally an unsorted mixture of all sizes from silt and <br />clay up to 10-foot boulders. The high fraction of very large <br />rock sizes and the large amount of fines silt and clay) indicate <br />that the material was transported in a very high energy, <br />debris-choked stream that could move giant boulders. The <br />gradient of the present Rapid Creek is about 600 feet per mile, <br />as the drainage descends from its head at 10,000-foot elevation <br />on Grand Mesa down to its confluence with the Colorado River <br />at about elevation 4,800 feet. The large volume of stream flow <br />that would have been necessary to move such a volume of material <br />is believed to have resulted from the melting of an ice cap <br />on Grand Mesa in Pleistocene times. The debris-laden stream <br />moved down the steep gradient of Rapid Creek and deposited its <br />Load as alluvial fans as the stream gradient lessened near the <br />Colorado River. <br />The fan materials on the subject Powder Mountain Ranch property <br />are estimated visually to be approximately 50 percent passing <br />2 <br />