The cliffs before you are the lower part of Cirrus Mountain.
They are made of limestone from the Upper Devonian Palliser
Formation. Above these cliffs is a much gentler grade section of
the mountain made from shales of the Banff Formation. Finally,
above this, the rugged peak of the mountain is created through
large cliff forming rocks of the Rundle Group. This
Palliser-Banff-Rundle formation is very common in the Canadian
Rockies. A careful look at the cliffs in front of you will show you
something that is very unique about this area.
This is a weeping wall. Though it appears somewhat like a
waterfall, unlike a waterfall, there is no river that feeds this.
In fact, the water is not cascading over the wall but actually
coming through small holes within the wall itself.
What causes this is the geology of the mountain itself. Cirrus
Mountain wraps around the Huntington Glacier that lies to the
southeast of the highest peak. As the glacier melts, much of the
water is prevented from escaping by the topmost rock of the
mountain. With nowhere else to go, the water seeps down through the
more permeable shale and limestone. It travels through various
channels within the rock itself and eventually emerges from the
side of the rock face. How this appears to the observer depends on
the time of year. In the summer and fall, one can see a steady
trickle of water from dozens of cracks in the wall. In the
springtime, the flow increases significantly as the increased
glacier run-off drives more water through the wall; for this wall,
the peak water flow appears around June. And in the winter, the
streams freeze into a sheer ice wall, creating one of the
world’s leading ice-climbing surfaces.
In order to log this cache please email the cache owner the
answers to the following questions, and post a photo of yourself
and/or your GPSr, with the Weeping Wall (or the Weeping Wall sign)
in the background.
1) Estimate how many waterfalls are visible. If the ice has
started to form, how much of the wall is covered with ice?
2) You likely noticed the limited erosion on the wall unlike
walls which contain a waterfall. What do you think causes this
difference?
3) Remember to post your photo!
Ref:
The Palynology and Micropalaeontology of Boundaries By Alwynne
Bowyer Beaudoin, Martin J. Head
Palliser Formation -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliser_Formation