Cow Bay Drumlin Field EarthCache

Cow Bay Drumlin Field

Cow Bay is an unincorporated rural community along the Marine Drive scenic route but at this location there is a drumlin field.

The community consists of 2 popular beaches, Rainbow Haven Beach, and Silver Sands Beach both are internationally known surfing locations and kayaking locations. Besides being an ocean community, Cow Bay also has 3 lakes, Bissett Lake, Cow Bay Lake, and Car Wash Lake. The Cow Bay River cuts through the centre of the community which consists of a number of small waterfalls before it enters Cow Bay Lake.

A drumlin, from the Irish word droimnín ("littlest ridge"), first recorded in 1833, in the classical sense is an elongated hill in the shape of an inverted spoon or half-buried egg formed by glacial ice acting on underlying unconsolidated till or ground moraine. Clusters of drumlins create a landscape which is often described as having a 'basket of eggs' topography. Drumlins are gently rounded hills in the form of giant, inverted spoons. They were created when ice deposited a jumbled layer of clay, sand, gravel and rock called till. Drumlins contain a high proportion of clay and are often no more than three-quarters of a mile long and half a mile wide. If you look at a drumlin’s long axis, you can see the direction the glacier was travelling.

The drumlins in the cow bay area, formed by glaciers that flowed across the Halifax region between 70,000 and 11,000 years ago during the Wisconsin Period dumping masses of boulders and clay. The drumlin has been shaped by glaciers during these separate advances into a lobate form, with one lobe parallel to an early southeastward ice flow from a New Brunswick glacier and another aligned with a later southward flow from an ice cap over the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A rock outcrop next to the drumlin shows crossing scratches or striae made by these glaciers as they scoured the exposed bedrock. The till deposits contain erratic boulders that have undergone a lengthy journey from their home outcrops in the Cobequid Highlands, 100 km to the north, carried by fast-moving rivers of ice called ice streams.

Drumlins are often in drumlin fields of similarly shaped, sized and oriented hills. Many Pleistocene drumlin fields are observed to occur in a fan-like distribution. The long axis of each drumlin is parallel to the direction of movement of the glacier at the time of formation. By looking at aerial photos of these fields you can easily track the glacier's progress through the landscape.

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: Ground Zero is most southerly drumlin, so look North, East and West.

Questions:

1. What is the elevation of the drumlin at ground zero?

2. How many drumlins do you see (hint: more than 3)?

3. Which one is higher? (use direction from ground zero)

4. Are these drumlins mostly rock or fine till? Why?

5. Where did the material to create these drumlins come from in Nova Scotia? (see write up)

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.