City of Lakes - A Glacial Experience EarthCache

City of Lakes - A Glacial Experience

Lake Banook is a freshwater lake located in Dartmouth within the Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia. It is home to three sprint canoe and kayak clubs, two rowing clubs, and a dragon boat club. It also has a claim to be the birthplace of ice hockey. Lake Banook is named for the Mi'kmaq phrase for "first lake", as it is the first lake in the system that later became the Shubenacadie Canal Waterway.

The present Shubenacadie Canal Waterway began to come together during the Quaternary ice age. Beginning 2.58 million years ago, these ice ages were intense periods of cold weather called glacial periods interspersed with warm periods called interglacials. The first ice sheets to cover the Maritimes formed about 500,000 years ago, reaching over one kilometre in thickness and extending as far as the Atlantic Ocean. These ice sheets were so heavy that they pushed the earth down beneath them, like pushing your hand into a sheet of foam. As they grew, they carried away soil and eroded the underlying bedrock; as they receded, they deposited this debris across the landscape. This cycle of growing and shrinking glaciers moving across the province continued for hundreds of millennia, with the ice sheets last reaching their maximum thickness about 24,000 years ago.

The movement of ice sheets across the Maritimes created deep gashes in the earth. These depressions filled with water as the glaciers melted, forming the extensive lakes and rivers of present-day Nova Scotia and the rest of Canada.

Lake Banook is connected to Lake Micmac (Second lake) at the north end. Today at the south end it drains into a Man made pond called Sullivan’s Pond. Prior to the construction of Sullivan’s Pond the lake flowed to Halifax Harbour through the Sawmill River. The River provided power to a number of businesses along its route. After a hurricane in 1971, Sawmill River was diverted to an underground culvert to prevent flooding

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.

Note: You can drive around the lake if needed to answer questions.

Questions:

1. At reference point 1, N44° 40.500' W63° 33.699', determine the elevation.

2. While at reference point 1, describe any reminisce of the glacier washout?

3. At reference point 2, N44° 40.889' W63° 33.010', determine the elevation.

4. While at reference point 2, describe any reminisce of the glacier washout?

5. Calculate the difference in elevation between the two reference points and explain what caused this value.?

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.