Stop 3:
Rock Quarry on McCulloch Road
 

After lunch and hiking back to the top of the canyon we will travel another 3.4 km past stop 2 on McCulloch road to the L & D Petch Canyon Rock Pit at the bottom of K.L.O. Creek canyon.  (This quarry is currently inactive, but is readily accessible from McCulloch Road - for information on activity at the quarry please contact L & D Petch Contracting at 250-491-0405).

At this stop, we will have a chance to identify some of the oldest rocks in British Columbia: the Monashee Gneiss.  These rocks once formed part of the ancient core of North America - the Precambrian Shield.  They are perhaps as old as 2 billion years.

We will use rock hammers and hand lenses to try and determine the mineral content of these rocks.   (We should be able to identify hornblende, microcline feldspar and quartz among others.)

Participants will also be told the approximate age of these rocks (2 billion years) and the approximate age of the rocks from our last stop at Layer Cake Hill (50 million years).  These rocks are at approximately the same elevation, but obviously have much different ages and origins.  They will be asked to hypothesize using correlation how this could happen.  (It is due to a fault zone separating volcanic rock on the north from much older metamorphic rock on the south.)
 

Deformation and Distinctive Banding Characteristic of Gneiss
 
 
 

Map of Stop 3
 
 
 

Approach to the Quarry From the Hairpin Turn on McCulloch Road at the bottom of  K.L.O. Creek Canyon

 

Exposed Portion of Quarry

At this stop we will also be able to observe glacial depositional features such as till outcrops along the road cut and a large erratic. Till is a direct deposit of ice and can be identifiedby the wide variance in size of deposits and its unsorted nature.  Erratics are also direct ice depositional features.  They are large boulders seemingly unrelated to the underlying bedrock.  They have been transported up to hundreds of kilometers from their source by these slow moving sheets of ice.

Till Outcrops on the Side of McCulloch Road
 

Erratic