9 September 2011
Friday fold: just Kidding
Posted by Callan Bentley
You’re looking here at Mount Kidd, a peak in the Front Ranges of the Canadian Rockies that displays a tight anticline/syncline duo superimposed on the strata of the Rundle Group. Located on the west side of Highway 40, the Kananaskis Trail, south of the trans-Canada Highway, this mountain shows us what happens with Carboniferous-aged carbonates got squished and squeezed during the construction of the Canadian Rockies (what in the U.S. we would call the Sevier Orogeny, in the Cretaceous). You don’t need much imagination to map these folds out…
I’m indebted to Ben Gadd‘s book Canadian Rockies Geology Road Tours (Corax Press, 2009) for the information about the strata of this mountain, and the name of the mountain itself, as well as a gazillion other details about Canadian Rockies geology. You should definitely pick up a copy if you’re ever up in that part of the world.
Hey! That’s my backyard! Nice photos! I know Mt. Kidd very well–scrambled up the syncline to the base of the first big cliff (a thin waterfall is visible in your photo). Lots of Friday Fold material in that general area, especially further south along Hwy 40, on the east side, in the Opal Range. Dunno if you saw the McConnell Thrust exposed to the north, at Barrier Lake and also on Mt. Yamnuska off the Trans-Canada (Cambrian carbonates thrust on top of Upper Cretaceous siliciclastics).
Pure geology, I love it all. Thank God for all this