ENVIRO
Stratigraphy Storytelling: Exploring Layers and Time While standing on the Columbia Icefield, Bow Valley author and storyteller, Lynn Martel, and ACMG Hiking Guide, Tim Patterson, contemplate how the layers found in a glacier mirror the complex layers of storytelling that make up our history.
Tim Patterson.
words :: Lynn Martel From foothills to rocky summits, mountains are experienced in layers. First-time visitors are awed by the grand landscape, the expansive vistas and majestic peaks. Those who return, or who stay, see layers that reveal themselves over time and with familiarity. They recognize the individual character of lakes and creeks and aspen stands. Those who explore the ridges, the cliffs, the summits and the glaciers nurture deeper connections—the feel of limestone under fingertips, the scent of splintered spruce in melting avalanche debris in June, the deep blue of a bottomless crevasse.
ZOYA LYNCH
In the Canadian Rockies, the mountains were formed of layers of sediments piled one onto the next in a shallow seabed, and then thrust upward as tectonic plates pushed layers atop others. Successive ice ages brought more layers to the landscape, when cold temperatures persisted over centuries, millennia, causing snow layers to pile up until the accumulated weight compressed that snow into ice. Swelling glaciers bulldozed their way along the terrain, pushing rocks and earth, grinding on bedrock. When the glaciers melted, they left behind rock piles, called moraines, and more layers of our geological history. Every individual glacier is formed of its own unique layers, influenced by the bedrock supporting
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