Margaretsville Pipes EarthCache

Margaretsville Pipes

Margaretsville was a A busy port during the early 1900s, now it is a placid seaside community favored by tourists, artists and retirees. Many locals refer to the village as 'Margaretville' (without an 's') and local road signs are inconsistent in their spelling of the name. However the present name is in fact Margaretsville, with the "S", as the Nova Scotia Geographical Names Database changed the name from "Margaretville" to "Margaretsville" on April 5, 1951.

The Margaretsville lighthouse is a 22 foot high tapered square wood tower painted white with black bands. The white light is shown 30 feet above the water it  was built when the residents of the thriving village of Margaretsville decided in 1859 that a lighthouse was a necessity to navigation for vessels plying the water of the Bay of Fundy in ever increasing numbers.  When the Margaretsville lighthouse was erected it was one of the first along the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of Fundy.

Geology

North Mountain is believed to have formed during the opening of the Atlantic Ocean as part of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP). The CAMP was a gigantic flood basalt and intrusive complex. The Central Atlantic magmatic province (CAMP) is the Earth's largest continental large igneous province, covering an area of roughly 11 million km. It is composed mainly of basalt that formed before Pangaea broke up in the Mesozoic Era, near the end of the Triassic and the beginning of the Jurassic periods.

Volcanic pipes

The pipe is the channel bored through the earth's crust that allows molten material from a magma chamber deep below the surface to travel up and out during a volcanic eruption. The entryway for magma into the pipe is called a vent, which ends in the depression called a crater. Lava, cinder and ash pour and explode from the pipe and crater to form an ever-building mountain or flat sheet of volcanic rock called cones or shields, respectively.

Below is a map of a small outcrop area in Brier Island Member at Margaretsville that contains an anomalous number of segregation pipes. The area is located 100 m southwest of the lighthouse west of the wharf at Margaretsville. The beach is covered in lava rock of various sizes and can be wet from the tide. Care must be taken because the footing can be precarious.

Below is an image of a pipe at Margaretsville

In the image below the (a) section represents a wave-washed outcrop of basalt with segregation pipes (circled) in plan view. Note that in two places (arrows), cooling joints cross-cut the pipes, thus providing evidence that the pipes formed prior to cooling and joint formation

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 will Need half to low Tide to see the exposed rocks

Questions:

1. How many pipes can you count in the area around ground zero?

2. What is the average size of the pipes (diameter)?

3. What is the colour and shape of the pipe(s)?

4. 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.