In the Belt Sea
A little over 1.5 billion years ago, most of the continents came together at the equator to form a supercontinent called Rodinia. As the continents slowly rifted apart, a depression formed and filled with sea water. Pre-Alberta was next to this sea. The rocks now forming the mountains of Waterton/Glacier were once sediments along the coast of this inland sea, called the Belt Sea. For the hundreds of millions of years that the Belt Sea existed, its floor alternately sank with its sedimentary load and uplifted with plate movement. Its shores advanced and retreated many times. Changes in the area's climate, water depth and rate of deposition are all recorded in the rock. Evidence of the ancient Belt Sea can be found in casts of ripple marks, mud cracks, salt crystals and cabbage-like algal colonies fossils called stromatolites we see today along the pathway.
Rodinia and Waterton location
Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodinia
Meanwhile, huge rivers flowed across the land and poured into the sea. During this era, erosion was immense due to the absence of plant roots to hold things down. For about 100 million years, sediments accumulated at the bottom of the Belt Sea. The sequence of rocks deposited in this sea reach a total thickness of about 15 km, which is remarkably thick. The source for most of the sediment is thought to be a now-vanished mountainous area to the west and southwest. Layer upon layer of sand, silt, clay and iron-rich mud were buried, compressed and cemented to form sandstone, shale and limestone. Some deeply buried layers were changed (metamorphosed) by additional pressure and heat. For example, shale changed to argillite (red and green rocks) and limestone to dolomite.
The green rocks contain non-oxidized iron, while the red rocks contain about three percent oxidized iron. The red colour indicates that, at some point, there was enough oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere to have affected those layers. The light-coloured layers (white, buff, light brown) are sandstone, limestone and a similar rock called dolomite.
Rock Layers
Rockies and Glaciers
Crustal disturbance caused by the North American continental plate moving west over an oceanic plate began about 150 million years ago. It mainly affected the Waterton/Glacier area about 75 million years ago. These plate movements created the folded, faulted Rocky Mountains. Over millions of years, while these rock layers were pushed up and eastward, they were attacked by water, wind, ice and gravity. At first, the mountains rose faster than they were whittled down by erosion. About 40 million years ago, with uplift slowing, the balance shifted.
The greatest mountain sculptors were glaciers, huge rivers of ice that dragged rocks and gravel across the bedrock, scraping and gouging out more material as they slowly flowed. Over the last 3 million years, North America experienced four major ice ages; the last major glaciation was 10,000 - 12,000 years ago, with a minor glacial advance 4000 years ago . The material scraped by the glaciers was transported in the ice, then dumped when the glaciers melted. Waterton no longer has any glaciers, only the sediments they left behind. Running water, aided by its cargo of mud and stones, is now the sculptor.
Red Rock Canyon is an impressive example of this work. The running water and the sediments it carries have carved the canyon, exposing 50 million years of rock deposits.
Red Rock Canyon
Sources:
Disclaimers:
- The Red Rock Parkway connecting Alberta's Highway 5 to the Red Rock Canyon opens on the first weekend in May and closes on November 1st.
- This Earthcache is located in a Canadian National Park. Entry fees are charged at Waterton Lakes National Park. Plase see the following link for fees information: http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/waterton/visit/tarifs_fees_e.asp
- Location and content of this cache was approved by Parks Canada. You don’t need to leave the pathway to find the answers to this Earthcache. Please see the following link for guidelines on Geocaching in the Waterton National Park: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/ab/waterton/activ/activ8.aspx.
Questions:
To log this Earthcache, cachers are asked to e-mail the answers of the following questions to me through my geocaching.com profile. Add the text "GC58QTC, Red Rock Canyon" to the first line of the email. Cachers who do not send me answers within 2 weeks will have their logs deleted.
The answer of some of these questions can be found on the information boards and plaques along the canyon’s loop trail.
1 – E-mail (do not post). The walls of the canyon contain only red, green and white rocks, where do the dark boulders and grey gravels found on the bottom of the canyon come from and how are they transported here?
2 – E-mail (do not post). What is the maximum depth the Red Canyon reaches and how much time is estimated it took for the stream to form the canyon?
3 – E-mail (do not post). Estimate the depth of the canyon at the Earthcache coordinates (GZ) – floor of the bridge to the water. Assuming the stream carves 2 mm of rock per year, how long did it take for the stream to carve to the bottom at this point?
4. Optional: Post a photo of yourself with GPS in hand with the Red Canyon on the background taken from the Earthcache coordinates.
Congratulations to 
mrcanoehead224 for the FTF! Couldn't have had a better FTF'er for this Earthcache.
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