It has been assigned radiometric ages between 88 and 87 million years and therefore reached its cooling stage in the Coniacian (Upper Cretaceous).

The Cathedral Peak Granodiorite forms part of the central eastern Sierra Nevada in California.

In the north and northeast it comes into contact with weakly metamorphosed country rocks, mainly Paleozoic and Jurassic metavolcanics and metasediments.

Radiometric dating of the cooling ages of the Cathedral Peak Granodiorite yielded 88.1 ± 0.2 down to 87.0 ± 0.7 million years BP, i.e. Coniacian.

The Tuolumne Intrusive Suite was constructed over a long time span of 8.1 million years by the following magmatic pulses (ordered by increasing age): This magmatic sequence shows the following geochronological and geochemical trends: The immediately apparent trait of the grey-white Cathedral Peak Granodiorite is its porphyritic habit with very large megacrysts of alkali feldspar commonly reaching 10, occasionally even 20 centimeters.

It is a typical calc-alkaline rock from the root zone of an ancient volcanic arc and associated with a subduction-type environment.

The trace elements demonstrate an enrichment in barium and strontium, nickel and chromium on the other hand have very low concentrations.

Originally petrologists favoured a single magma chamber model for the genesis of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite which underwent fractional crystallization and successively produced the different rock types like the Cathedral Peak Granodiorite.

Collins supports a metasomatic subsolidus growth (potassium- and silica-metasomatism) that has been initiated by ongoing tectonic cataclasis.