Welcome to the Irving Nature Park, a 243 hectare (600 acre) site created to protect a special part of the Bay of Fundy coastline and where the public is welcome to enjoy the park’s rugged beauty. Please take the time to explore its trails and lookout points, its boardwalk on the salt marsh, its picnic sites and its free gas barbecues. Also special events like snowshoeing, geological history, meteor showers, mud flat ecology, butterfly identification, craft sessions, story sessions and children’s day camps to explore nature are all free. This earthcache will focus on the geological history that can be experienced here as a result of a glacier located here during the last ice age. This earthcache is best visited one hour before to one hour after low tide.
Earthscience/Geoscience Lesson
At a time geologists call the “Last Glacial maximum”, glaciers covered most of North America, including Atlantic Canada. A glacier forms as snow accumulates faster than melting occurs; and as the snow becomes thicker, its own weight causes it to crystallize as ice. It can take tens, hundreds or thousands of years for a glacier to develop enough mass to generate the pressure needed to cause the lower part of the glacier to become plastic and begin to flow. The rate of flow may be influenced by water that forms under the glacier which repeatedly freezes and thaws. As the water at the base of a glacier freezes, rock fragments and sand are captured in the ice and are carried by the glacier. The finer particles such as sand polishes the bedrock over which the glacier flows, while larger material such as pebbles and boulders protruding from the base of the flowing glacier cut striations (grooves and gouges) in the bedrock. The maximum extent of glaciation of the last glacier was approximately 18,000 tyears ago and it is believed that the glacier may have been 1.5 km thick over the Maritimes.
From the parking coordinates, walk westward along the beach to the posted coordinates. There you can observe the striations and the polishing of the bedrock caused by a glacier. The last glacier at this location terminated at an ocean, and is referred to as a tidewater glacier. Just imagine being here as large sections broke away (calved) from the ice front of the glacier.
Another feature of glaciation can be observed from this location, a moraine. Glacial moraines are formed by the material deposited from a glacier and are exposed after the glacier has retreated. These features usually appear as linear mounds of till. Sediment deposited directly from a glacier is called till. Till may consist of clay, sand, pebbles, and boulders. Where glacial advance and melting cancel each other out, the edge of a glacier may be stationary for many years and till can build up to form a prominent ridge called a moraine.
By looking to the northwest from the beach road (beyond the salt marsh) you can see the Manawagonish Moraine. Before the last ice age the St. John River flowed through the area of this earthcache, however as a result of the moraine being formed by the last glacier, the course of the St. John River was altered and the river found its way to sea via the gorge that is today known as the Reversing Rapids.
There is yet another glacial feature that can be observed by walking eastward along the Saints Rest-Sheldon Point beach. On your way to coordinates N45 13.511 W066 06.676 you can observe the red clay in the beach cliffs. The cliffs are composed of layers of Glaciomarine sediments. Glaciomarine sediments occur when a glacier deposits till in a marine environment. Occasionally fossils of sea urchins and brittlestars can be found in the clay. Dating of shell samples has established the age of the samples to be 11,000 to 14,000 years old. Please do not dig for fossils and if by chance you find a fossil, please photoghaph it, note it's location and report it to the New Brunswick Museum.
Please explore the remainder of the Irving Nature Park, a wonderful place to have a picnic, hike, and bird watch. Please return at high tide and witness the World Famous High Tides of the Bay of Fundy.
To log the earthcache.
You will need a measuring stick, and the earthcache is best completed at low tide.
Submit your answers by E-Mail before logging your find.
Logs submitted without emailing an answer will be Deleted.
1. Please begin the email with the earthcache name and the number of people in your group.
2. At the posted coordinates look up the rock face two meters, you can observe three prominent horizontal striations to the left of the verticle crack in the rock face. What is the average width of these striations?
3. Using the striations as a guide, what direction do you think the glacier was flowing? (ie: east to west, north to south, west to east, south to north)
4. What is the difference in the elevation between the posted coordinates at the rock face and Manawagonish Road ? (opposite the intersection of Manawagonish Rd and Westgate Drive ,the view to the southeast will be Irving Nature Park)
5. What is your estimated height of the cliff face at N45 13.511 W066 06.676? Maybe this will help you estimate. Take a pencil or some other straight stick. Step back so you can see the entire cliff in your site and it is the same height as the pencil when you hold the pencil out in front of you. Take the pencil in your hand, line the top of the pencil up with the top of the cliff and slide your thumb down so it is even with the bottom of the cliff. Next rotate the pencil 90 degrees so your thumb is still at the base of the cliff and the top of the pencil is parallel to the bottom of the cliff. Mark or make note of where the tip of the pencil is on the bottom of the cliff. Now if you measure from the base of the cliff to where the tip of the pencil was on the ground at the bottom of the cliff you should have a pretty close estimate of the height of the cliff. Good Luck! PS, You can pace the distance and then measure the length of your pace, then do the math.
6. Post a picture in your log with a personal item or hand in picture to prove you were there.
[REQUIRED] In accordance with the updated guidelines from Geocaching Headquarters published in June 2019, photos are now an acceptable logging requirement and WILL BE REQUIRED TO LOG THIS CACHE. Please provide a photo of yourself or a personal item in the picture to prove you visited the site.