Travels in Cascadia: You Can Have Your Niagara Falls, and I'll Have Mine...Goldstream Provincial Park, B.C.

Our journey through British Columbia last July continued. We were on Vancouver Island and were leaving the city of Victoria to catch the ferry back to the mainland at Nanaimo. But there were still some sights along the way. The town of Victoria was built on the lowlands at the south end of the island, but as we began traveling north the landscape grew more rugged and mountainous. The vast ice sheets of the last ice age covered the entire island, but the ice could not remove the tougher bedrock of the island's interior. Looking south from Malahat Summit (l,155 feet/352 meters) we could see the hills we had just explored, including the delightful Goldstream Provincial Park.

The park hosts a surprising variety of plant and animal life, due to a wide variety of habitats. Part of the value of the park is that it has not been logged, and thus preserves old-growth forests, including 700 year old Cedar trees. It includes an estuary/wetland at the end of the Finlayson Arm of the Strait of Georgia, part of the Salish Sea. The long inlet exists because the glaciers were able to exploit a fault zone that left the rocks weakened and broken. The Leech River Fault, a major terrane boundary, cuts through the park, dividing the Pacific Rim Terrane (the Leech River Complex) from Wrangellia. Wrangellia is made up of igneous intrusive rocks and metamorphic rocks from the Mesozoic Era, the age of the dinosaurs.

Looking south from the Nature Center one can see Mount Finlayson (below), another feature that indicates the presence of glaciers in the past. The rounded form of the mountain identifies it as a roche moutonnée, a larger-scale version of the rounded forms seen at Mt. Douglas and Mt. Tolmie in Victoria.

The title of today's post refers to one of the small delights of the park. The erosive action of the glaciers was oriented mostly north to south, and the ridgelines drop steeply into the valley containing the Finlayson Arm. Small creeks and rivers occasionally form modest waterfalls, including the easily accessed Niagara Falls. Visiting the waterfall, one realizes it was not named for the similarity of its volume to the better-known falls back east, but to the height. At 155 feet, it's just a bit shorter than Niagara's 167 feet (note the people at the bottom of the canyon for scale).

One might wonder why Goldstream Park has the name it has. The rocks of the Leech River Complex were altered by superheated mineralized water, and quartz veins with minor amounts of gold were emplaced in the area. The gold was discovered in 1858, and a minor rush involving perhaps 300 miners ensued a few years later. There was not a great deal of gold to be had, and the boom soon petered out, but the name remained. A few old tunnels and mines can still be seen in the park.

I know this is a geology blog, and most of the time I don't have much patience for trying to get pictures of deer, but as I was walking up the trail to the falls, I broke with tradition. Up ahead of me I could see some kind of four-footed animal, and it turned out to be the cutest little fawn ever. It was happy to share the trail with me for a few moments, until the rest of the crew caught up with me. It then took off into the underbrush.

Goldstream Provincial Park is west and north of Victoria on the Trans-Canada Highway 1. We were there on a holiday weekend and the parking lots filled quickly (we made some people very happy when our four vehicles left all at once). If you have the time and energy, a trail climbs to the summit of Mt. Finlayson.

Travels in Cascadia: Victoria B.C., the City of Mutton Rocks

The next stop in our recent travels through Cascadia was the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. We got there by way of a ferry from Port Angeles, Washington, as described in the last post. Victoria is an attractive city, one of the most temperate in Canada, given its location on the Pacific shoreline (the adjacent ocean moderates the seasonal temperature extremes). It is also unique in another respect. The city is partially constructed on bedrock (the solid rock that underlies surface soils and sediments), and the land was under a vast 1,000 meter thick ice sheet only 14,000 years ago.

This geologically unique combination means that Victoria is sort of a city of mutton rocks.

I imagine that sentence needs explanation...

The term roche moutonnée describes an asymmetrical glacially scoured rock outcrop that has a smooth slope on the side facing the flowing ice, and a steep cliff on the side where the glacier pulled away from the outcrop ("stoss and lee structure" is a related term). The scale can range from a few meters to many hundreds. They are common features in regions of bedrock that have been scoured by massive continental ice sheets, such as happened in Victoria. One of the tallest hills within the city, Mt. Tolmie (below), is an excellent example. In the picture one can see the gently sloping forested flank on the left side of the hill, and the steeper plucked side to the right.

Mt. Tolmie, a roche moutonnée in Victoria

The problem with roche moutonnée as a geological term is that we geologists can only barely agree on its meaning. It's derived from French, and the "roche" part isn't a problem. It means "rock". But "moutonnée" is the tricky aspect. It can be translated loosely as "sheep" (think "mutton""), but not exactly (French: "mouton"). Moutonnée (with the extra e's) translates to "frizzy", and is taken as a reference to sheep's wool. The term originated in the 1700s with a naturalist named Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (it would be decades before the term "geologist" was coined) who noted that the rocks looked like a type of wig apparently well-known at the time whose locks were held in place with mutton grease. Except that there seem to be few or no references to wigs that were actually called that (the closest version was a tête de mouton).

So we teachers are left with trying to define the term as meaning "rock sheep" based on the nebulous idea that the rocks look like sheep grazing in meadows. Which they really don't. But it's still easier than trying to describe obscure French wigs from the 1700s and mutton grease.

There are consequences to building on such rocky landscapes. There are plenty of large patches of glacial till that are easy to plane off with a bulldozer for building construction, but when the rock crops out, allowances have to be made. Perhaps it might involve blasting to construct a flat foundation. The rock is pretty tough stuff, gabbro, diorite, and greenstone of the Wrangellia terrane, dating back to the era of dinosaurs.

There are problems in this kind of situation. When the Empress Hotel (see the picture above) was constructed in 1904-1905 it was placed partly on solid rock and partly on mud-rich sediments. Complications quickly ensued. The south part of the building subsided several centimeters within the first year and ultimately sank about a meter. It's a real headache for those who must maintain the building.

Still, Victoria is a truly beautiful city, and the city has a unique personality. The city has miles of coastline, and there are dozens of scenic shoreline parks. We pulled up at Cattle Point to look at smaller roches moutonnée along with glacial scour marks and striations. Strangely enough, there was a piano sitting on the bluff. It was brightly painted, there was a bench, and the piano was in tune! I wondered what was going to happen to it if it rained, but then noticed a waterproof cover. We later found that there are five such pianos in the parks, and we were actually treated to a tune by a passing jogger, followed by a song by one of our students!

If you ever have a chance to visit Victoria, enjoy the city, but be sure to follow the shoreline drive to see the glacial heritage of the landscape (as well as seeing some dramatic coastal scenery). But the other thing you should do is to hike or drive to the summit of the mutton rocks of the city. Mt. Tolmie is a good choice within the city limits, or you can go just north of the city to the much higher summit of Mt. Douglas. It's a short hike from the parking lot to a summit with a 360 degree view of the region. The Olympic Mountains are visible across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the south beyond the city, and the many islands of the Strait of Georgia and Saanich Inlet are visible to the north and east. Glacial polish, striations and grooves are present underfoot.

On the day we were there, I saw some unusual looking clouds far to the southeast. I took a few highly zoomed shots and forget about them until weeks later. I started working with the contrast and exposure of the picture and realized I had captured an image of Mt. Rainier across the Puget Sound. The volcano is more than 130 miles away (below)!

I had three main resources for the geology in and around the city:
The Geology of Southern Vancouver Island by Chris Yorath
Roadside Geology of Southern British Columbia by Bill Mathews and Jim Monger
Geology of British Columbia, A Journey Through Time by Sydney Cannings, JoAnne Nelson, and Richard Cannings.

Feeling a Bit Sheepish: A Bit of Glacial Mutton in the Sierra Nevada

Pothole Dome in Tuolumne Meadows at Yosemite National Park

Sometimes glacial terms represent some kind of logical relationship to reality. "Horns" that are sharp pointed glacial peaks, "cirques" that are circular-shaped glacial bowls, "glacial polish" referring to rock worn smooth by glaciers, or "moraine lakes" that are lakes dammed by glacial moraines. Then there are the others: tarns, eskers, kettles, aretes, and cols, the kinds of terms that cause misery among my first-year geology students. But one term seems to depart from all reality...roche moutonnée

Unnamed roche moutonnée just north of Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows

The term roche moutonnée describes an asymmetrical glacially scoured rock outcrop that has a smooth slope on the side facing the flowing ice, and a steep cliff on the side where the glacier pulled away from the outcrop ("stoss and lee structure" is a related term). The scale can range from a few meters to many hundreds. They are common features in regions of bedrock that have been scoured by massive continental ice sheets, but are a bit less common in mountainous areas eroded by alpine glaciers. These glaciers are the kind that filled valleys, but didn't overwhelm the surrounding peaks, such as those that flowed through most canyons of the Sierra Nevada. Yosemite Valley is the most famous, but glaciers filled dozens of other major river canyons from south of Sequoia National Park all the way north to the Lassen Volcanic National Park region. At their height, these glaciers covered about 30% of the mountain range.

Hiking the gentle slope of Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows

The Tuolumne Meadows region of Yosemite National Park was an odd exception to the usual Sierra Nevada glaciers. The area surrounding the meadows was covered by a 2,000 foot thick mass of ice that was far more like a continental ice sheet than an alpine glacier. The ice spilled over ridges into several other drainages, including that of the Merced River, which carved Yosemite Valley. The addition of ice from the Tuolumne drainage gave the Yosemite glaciers an extra bit of "oomph", allowing them to erode deeper and farther than they would have otherwise.

Looking down the western edge of Lembert Dome. Note the glacial polish on the summit ridge.

There are numerous roche moutonnées in the Tuolumne Meadows area, including the easily seen Pothole Dome (first picture of this post), and Lembert Dome near the Tuolumne Meadows campground (below). The summits of each are easily climbed (from the right direction, anyway), and both provide stunning views of the region.

The problem with roche moutonnée as a geological term is that we geologists can only barely agree on its meaning. It's derived from French, and the "roche" part isn't a problem. It means "rock". But "moutonnée" is the tricky one. It can be translated loosely as "sheep" (think "mutton""), but not exactly (French: "mouton"). Moutonnée (with the extra e's) translates to "frizzy", and is taken as a reference to sheep's wool. The term originated in the 1700s with a naturalist named Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (it would be decades before the term "geologist" was coined) who noted that the rocks looked like a type of wig apparently well-known at the time whose locks were held in place with mutton grease. Except that there seem to be few or no references to wigs that were actually called that (the closest version was a tête de mouton).

So we teachers are left with trying to define the term as meaning "rock sheep" based on the nebulous idea that the rocks look like sheep grazing in meadows. Which they really don't. But it's still easier than trying to describe obscure French wigs from the 1700s and mutton grease.

A few weeks back we were on our field studies trip to the eastern Sierra Nevada, and we descended from Sonora Pass into the drainage of the West Walker River at Leavitt Meadows. I was describing various glacier features and even mentioned the presence of a few ill-defined roche moutonnées upstream of the meadow. You can see them in the picture below. But then I noticed something else in the midst of the meadow. I saw them, and now you are hoping that Geotripper won't go there, but he will...

Yes. It was actual....

...rock sheep! In a meadow.

But I still don't think they look like eroded glacial domes.

For an excellent description of the derivation of the geologic term, check out this great story from the Atlantic.

A Series of Fortunate Events: Climbing a Dome That's Not Exactly a Dome...It's Rock Mutton

There are domes and there are "domes". Yosemite National Park has a lot of domes of one sort or another, and there has always been a bit of confusion about their origin. From various points in Yosemite Valley, one can spy at least four them, famous Half Dome, less famous Sentinel Dome, North Dome, and Basket Dome. Although Yosemite is famous as a work of glacial action, the domes actually are not directly related to glacial erosion. As described in the previous post on Sentinel, these domes rose above the glacial ice. They formed instead because of exfoliation, the tendency of slabs of granitic rock to break off the corners and edges of monolithic chunks of exposed rock. In time they take their rounded shape.

Image from http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Monstro

In the high alpine parts of Yosemite, the situation is different. Tuolumne Meadows is not a "U"-shaped glacial valley. It has an open aspect, with high mountain ridges separated by wide meadowlands dotted with granite monoliths that rise above the dark forests. The granitic knobs look less like rounded domes, and more like Monstro the Whale breaching at sea, with a gentle slope on one side, and nearly vertical cliffs on the other. Two of the most obvious are Lembert and Pothole Domes. Both rocks are popular hiking destinations, and both provide stunning views of the high country of Yosemite. Pothole Dome was our destination on this trip.

The open country of Tuolumne Meadows resulted from a different kind of glaciation. In Yosemite Valley, the glaciers only occupied the valley itself. At Tuolumne, the glaciers covered the entire landscape apart from the highest peaks. The depth of the ice exceeded 2,000 feet (~700 meters). Such glaciers are called icecaps or icefields, and they produce a different set of erosional features. Pothole and Lembert Domes are examples of Rock Mutton.

Oh, excuse my French! The domes are examples of a roche moutonnée. This has been translated variably as greasy mutton wig rocks, fleecy rock, or rock sheep, and none of these is a particularly apt description. The first was related to the sheep grease that was used to hold the hair in place in the old wigs worn by French and English dignitaries. The fleece referred to the "resemblance" of these rocks to the locks of hair in the aforementioned wigs, and the last was said to be a description of the rocks appearing as grazing sheep from distant vistas. I don't quite get it, but c'est la vie.

Whatever you might want to call it, Pothole Dome provides an intimate understanding of what rock is like when subjected to intense glaciation. The gentle slope, which faced the oncoming ice flows, has been smoothed and abraded by rocks, sand, silt embedded in the ice. The passage of the gritty ice has left grooves, striations, and polished surfaces that make climbing the dome a great deal easier than one might expect. Most of the huffing and puffing comes from the high altitude (8,000 feet/~2,700 meters) rather than steepness.

The steeper western side of Pothole Dome was "plucked". Ice formed in cracks and fissures of the granitic rock and was pulled loose by the glacier as it flowed away from the rock. This made for a decidedly asymmetrical dome structure if one wants to call it a dome at all.

An alternate term for these rocks is a stoss and lee structure. "Stoss" comes from a German term for "push" or "thrust", referring to the gentle slope facing the flow of ice (the glacier "pushes" up the slope). The "lee" refers to the trailing steeper plucked side. I tend to prefer this description, although it still isn't all that descriptive. How about a "scour and pluck" structure?

The other unmistakable evidence of the passage of glaciers is the sheer numbers of boulders that lie scattered across the surface of the dome. There aren't many good explanations for how these boulders could have gotten here without invoking the passage of ice (the boulders came from a different kind of granite exposed off to the east). These out of place rocks are called glacial erratics.

There are marvelous examples of glacial polish and striations all over the surface of Pothole Dome. The ice was last here around 12,000 years ago, so the rough surfaces surrounding the polished sections provide an idea of how slowly the granite is weathered in this cold alpine climate. At lower elevations, the rock would weather much faster and the polish would rapidly disappear.

From the top of the dome, one can see some of the terrain that stuck out above the icecap, including the Cathedral Range (below). The peaks are classed as horns when glaciers flowed away from the mountain, plucking away at the flanks, or nunateks when the glaciers flowed around the peaks, scouring away at the higher slopes.

Pothole Dome's name reflects the presence of potholes on the south flank of the dome. These round holes formed when ice melted into the glacier through holes and tubes called moulins. The water flowing under the ice mixed with boulders and gravel in large swirling masses to grind out the holes.

The final glacial feature we noticed while climbing down were the chattermarks, concentric fractures caused when boulders being dragged at the base of the glacier skipped and chipped the surface. Usually the cusps of the crescents point away from the ice flow direction, so I found these a bit mysterious. The crescents open toward the east, presumably the direction the ice came from.

The day was passing and we had a few stops left on the itinerary. They'll be covered next time!