Monday 10 April 2017

TECTONIC SHIFTING: BAJA BC

Some 270 million plus years ago, had one wanted to buy waterfront property in what is now British Columbia, you’d be looking somewhere near Kakwa Provincial Park between Prince George and the Alberta border. 

The rest of the province had yet to arrive but would be made up of over twenty major terranes from around the Pacific. 

The rocks that would eventually become the Cariboo Mountains were far out in the Pacific Ocean, down near the equator.

With tectonic shifting, these rocks drifted north-eastward, riding their continental plate, until they collided with and joined the Cordillera in what is now British Columbia. Continued pressure and volcanic activity helped create the tremendous slopes of the Cariboo Range we see today with repeated bouts of glaciation during the Pleistocene carving their final shape.