Cape Horn (Spanish: Cabo de Hornos), named after the city of Hoorn in the Netherlands, is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago (Island group) of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island. Although not the most southerly point of South America (which are the Diego Ramírez Islands), Cape Horn marks the northern boundary of the Drake Passage and marks where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans collide.
Cape Horn is at 56° south latitude. The prevailing winds in latitudes below 40° south can blow from west to east around the world almost uninterrupted by land, giving rise to the "roaring forties" and the even more wild "furious fifties" and "screaming sixties". These winds are hazardous enough that ships traveling east would tend to stay in the northern part of the forties (i.e. not far below 40° south latitude); however, rounding Cape Horn requires ships to press south to 56° south latitude, well into the zone of fiercest winds.[18] These winds are exacerbated at the Horn by the funneling effect of the Andes and the Antarctic peninsula, which channel the winds into the relatively narrow Drake Passage.
The strong winds of the Southern Ocean give rise to correspondingly large waves; these waves can attain great height as they roll around the Southern Ocean, free of any interruption from land. At the Horn, however, these waves encounter an area of shallow water to the south of the Horn, which has the effect of making the waves shorter and steeper, greatly increasing the hazard.
Geology or Terra de Fuego Archipelago The geology of the archipelago is characterized by the effects of the Andean orogeny and the repeated Pleistocene glaciations. The geology of the island can be divided into large east–west-oriented units. The southwestern islands of the archipelago, including Cape Horn, are part of the Patagonian Batholith, while Cordillera Darwin and the area around Beagle Channel form the principal codillera hosting the highest mountains. The Magallanes fold and thrust belt extends north of Almirantazgo Fjord and Fagnano Lake, and north of this lies the Magallanes foreland; an old sedimentary basin that hosts hydrocarbon reserves.[7] Orthogneiss dated at 525 million years is known to underlie some of the oil wells in northern Tierra del Fuego.
The Magallanes–Fagnano Fault, a dextral strike slip fault crosses the southern part of the main island from west to east. It is an active fault, located inside and parallel to the Fuegian fold and thrust belt, and marks the boundary between a southern belt of Paleozoic meta sediments and a northern Mesozoic belt of sedimentary sequences. Fagnano Lake occupies a glacier-carved depression in a pull-apart basin that has developed along the Magallanes-Fagnano Fault zone.[9] Podzols and inceptisols occur beneath Nothofagus betuloides forests in Tierra del Fuego.[10]
The Andean orogeny (Spanish: Orogenia andina) is an ongoing process of orogeny, that begun in the Early Jurassic, responsible for the rise of Andes mountains. The orogeny is driven by a reactivation of a long-lived subduction system along the western margin of South America. On a continental scale the Cretaceous (90 Ma) and Oligocene (30 Ma) were periods of re-arrangements in the orogeny. Locally the details of the nature of the orogeny varies depending on the segment and the geological period considered.
The Pleistocene (pronunciation: /ˈplaɪstəˌsiːn, -toʊ-/,[1] often colloquially referred to as the Ice Age) is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's most recent period of repeated glaciations. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology.
The Patagonian Batholith is a collective name for a three batholiths in western and southern Patagonia:
• North Patagonian Batholith
• South Patagonian Batholith
• Tierra del Fuego Batholith
A batholith (from Greek bathos, depth + lithos, rock) is a large emplacement of igneous intrusive (also called plutonic) rock that forms from cooled magma deep in the Earth's crust. Batholiths are almost always made mostly of felsic or intermediate rock-types, such as granite, quartz monzonite, or diorite (see also granite dome).
Drake Passage: The passage is known to have been closed until around 41 million years ago[2] according to a chemical study of fish teeth found in oceanic sedimentary rock. Before the passage opened, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated entirely with Antarctica being much warmer and having no ice cap. The joining of the two great oceans started the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and cooled the continent significantly.
Information comes from Wikipedia. Footnotes can be found on the following pages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Horn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_del_Fuego
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batholith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagonian_Batholith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Passage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_orogeny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene
Answers 1-5 are included in the above discussion.
1) What is an archipelago?
2) How does the latitude affect the prevailing winds around Cape Horn?
3) When was the drake passage closed geographically?
4) What is the name of the active fault that is near Cape Horn?
5) What geological rock is found on Cape Horn?
To prove you visited Cape Hon
6) Using the information about the prevailing winds, as you approach the coordinates for this cache using the wooden path, what direction are you walking?
********** Congrats to mrsgreek and thegreek on CO-FTF **********