Kentville Kame EarthCache

Kentville Kame

At the coordinates it will bring you to the entrance of a pit.  You will be sitting on part of the kame and be able to see the wall around you. It has had major excavation both at this site and further in. On the wall to the right (west side) there is a house built on the top of the Kame. The image below gives an outline of the kame. You can also view the size of the came from N 45° 05.011 W 064° 30.658.

Geology of a Kame

During the Quaternary Period, which covers the last 1.6 million years of earth history, the climate cooled and large glaciers periodically covered the earth’s surface. Nova Scotia was affected by at least four ice advances from 75,000 to 10,000 years ago (called the Wisconsinan Glacial Stage).

Kame topography forms where large quantities of debris are reworked by meltwater from the receding glacier.  These were formed as  glaciers moved over the surface of Nova Scotia  gouging and scraping out the earth’s surface to rework the landscape. There have been at least five documented major ice ages during the 4.6 billion years since the Earth was formed — and most likely, many more before humans came on the scene about 2.3 million years ago.

Definition: a hill or hummock composed of stratified sand and gravel laid down by glacial meltwater

Kames are amongst the most varied land forms resulting from deposition by glacial melt water. A kame (Scots kaim a hill) may occur as an isolated hill but more generally each kame is one mound in a low-lying terrain of many hummocks, terraces, ridges and hollows. Kames often occur in association with kettle holes in kame and kettle topography. Eskers may also occur between the kames. Meltwater channels may be cut into and between the kames. These associations indicate that kames are formed close to ice margins in situations where there are large volumes of both meltwater and debris.

The sediments inside kames are often exposed by quarrying. Bedded and sorted sand and gravel predominates but often sharp lateral variations are apparent in the calibre of the material, indicating rapid changes in flow velocity. Small details may reveal much about the events during deposition. The sloping beds of delta foresets indicate sand deposition in a pond or lake. Sands clasts, rounded blocks of now-loose sand, show that beds of saturated sands were frozen prior to transport. Beds of sand and gravel may be displaced by faults or rucked by folds, signs that the sides of the kame may have slumped after deposition or that ice has pushed forward again. Some kames are capped by till, indicating a late readvance of ice or deposition in a pond beneath the ice. Ice wedge casts on the surface of the kame point to the development of permafrost during and after ice retreat.

Kames form in the chaotic zone of melting ice, water and oozing sediment close to the ice margin. Virtually any hollow within the decaying front may fill with water and receive sediment - crevasses, moulins and larger cavities. As the ice melts, the kame begins to emerge as a hump but its side are saturated and no longer supported by ice and so slumping is possible. Buried blocks of ice melt slowly to leave water-filled kettle holes.

To log this Earthcache visit the viewing location.  Please answer the following questions and send in a timely manner to my geocaching profile or email. Answers not received will result in deleted logs.

1 - How tall is the wall on your right (West side) in meters?

2 - What is your elevation?

3 - Using the information from questions 1 and 2, calculate the cubic meters of material in the Kame. The Kame is 650 m long and 500 m wide, volume is length x width x height. Calculate 650m x 500 m x (q1 + q2)

4 - Describe the nature of the material in the wall on your right (West side)?

5 - Post a picture of the kame wall and/or you.

[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.