Lake Melville Rift Valley - TLAB EarthCache
Lake Melville Rift Valley - TLAB
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Goose Bay - Happy Valley are built on the amalgamated sandy
deltas of the Goose and Churchill rivers, where they enter Lake
Melville. Sand depth has been measured in excess of 500 feet.You
can park on the coordinates opposite the east end of the main
airport runway in Goose Bay, and look northeast across Lake
Melville, which is actually an arm of the sea.
The broad valley, much of which is occupied by the lake, was formed
as a rift valley in Late Proterozoic time, but was carved into its
present shape by glaciers during the last three million years. At
the end of the ice age, the lake was larger than it is now and the
area where you stand was then a beach. The lowlands around the
shore are covered by sand that was washed into the lake as the ice
sheet melted and retreated. The fault on the northwest side of the
rift valley is the line of cliffs extending into the distance on
the left. The southeast boundary is the escarpment of the Mealy
Mountains on the south side of the lake. The highlands on both
sides of the valley are composed mainly of anorthosite. The Lake
Melville rift valley is a widened extension of the Churchill River
rift valley and is a branch of the huge rift system that split the
continents apart in the Late Proterozoic and formed the Iapetus
Ocean. To log this Earthcache please take a picture of yourself or
part of yourself with your GPS and Lake Melville in the background.
Also email the owner DO NOT POST YOUR ANSWERS IN YOUR LOGS
PLEASEtelling the answer to two of the following; 1) what is the
approximate elevation you are standing at? 2) an estimate of how
far inland are you from the Atlantic Ocean? 3) the approximate
length of either the Goose or Churchill River?DO NOT POST YOUR
ANSWERS IN YOUR LOGS PLEASE
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
QB ABG CBFG LBHE NAFJREF VA LBHE YBTF CYRNFR