10 April 2020

Friday fold: Sorrosal Falls, Pyrenees

Posted by Callan Bentley

This gorgeous image popped up in my Twitter stream this week:

That comes from Amicia Lee, who revealed that it is Cascada de Sorrosal or “Broto Falls” in the Pyrenees:

Here, cropping out some of the gaudy distractions and zooming in on the good stuff:

Amicia writes,

The[se strata] are folded turbidites deposited in the Lutetian* and deformed during the Pyrenean-Alpine Orogeny. I’m not sure on the exact timing of deformation relative to deposition. Pretty sure flexural slip was a big talking point here, but we talked about it a lot so I could be confusing outcrops! The waterfall is located here in the village of Broto on the edge of Ordesa National Park, Spain. Sorry I can’t tell you any more, if I had my notebook with me I could have told you a lot more, but as everyone is finding right now, useful things are locked away in our offices.

There is also a via ferrata route that goes up the left side and through a cave and into the gorge at the back; you can see the ladders just above the vegetation patch about half way up the cliff.

Waterfalls don’t do too much for me in general, but I’d go to see this one for the lovely folds exposed on its face!

Thanks for sharing, Amicia! This is awesome.

* An age / stage in the Eocene. It spans 47.8 to 41.2 Ma.