Kelowna Geo-Tour
By Maya and Brooklyn
About the geo-tour
While on this geo-tour you will go to five of Kelowna's most interesting sites and receive
information at each one. This educational tour will teach you how to identify different rocks, how these mountains formed and other geography information. You will also have the chance to collect multiple rocks at each site and enjoy a nice lunch at mission park.
Knox Mountain Lookout
Our first stop on this tour is the Knox Mountain Lookout. First we have to drive through downtown Kelowna then up the dirt road to the lookout. From the mountain you have a clear view of the bridge, Mount Boucherie and Okanagan Lake. you can also see the wood mill that has been in business for 58 years. This mountain was formed through 4 different processes. these processes include, plate movement, erosions, glacier movement and volcanic activity. The level of the Okanagan Lake has dropped drastically in the past 13 000 years. the water used to reach all the way up to the lookout on Knox mountain. Down the middle of Okanagan lake there is a fault line where two plate tectonics meet. A fault line is a fracture in earths crust where rocks on each side have slid past each other.
Gorman's Mill
Now, after Knox Mountain we travel across the the lake, into West Kelowna, all the way to Gorman's Mill. At Gorman's Mill you can find sedimentary rocks. This type of rock is formed by materials deposited at earth's surface within bodies of water. Something interesting about these sedimentary rocks is that you can find pieces of metamorphic and igneous rock that would have originally formed in Mount Boucherie. Some rocks at Gorman's Mill had thin, black layers. These were fossils inside the rock. When there are fossils in the rocks that means that the climate used to be a lot warmer with lots of water.
North Side of Mt. Boucherie
East Side of Mt. Boucherie
Extrusive Igneous rock
Mount Boucherie
From Gorman's Mill, we drove down some roads, and now we arrive at Mount Boucherie. Mount Boucherie used to be a stratovolcano. A stratovolcano is a volcano built up of layers of lava and ash, but now Mount Boucherie is known for a mountain. About 50 million years ago Mount Boucherie used to be about 2 000 meters above the lake. Now it only rises about 417 meters in height. The size has decreased majorly because of mudslides and landslides. Extrusive igneous rocks are found at this site. You can easily identify this type of rock because it has pockets in it that are left from gas.
Layer Cake Mountain
Now we have to drive back over the bridge, back into Kelowna to get to Layer Cake Mountain. You can get a nice view of this unique mountain when you drive up a small hill and peer across the edge. It got it's name from the distinct layering from a cause that has not been completely decided on. One of the scientific theories on how the layering happened was that there was only one flow of extrusive igneous lava and it fractured as it cooled. One section of the mountain is slightly slanted because of plate movement.
The Quarry
after going to layer cake mountain we hoped on the bus once again and drove up the hill to layer cake mountain. we hoped off the bus and walked across the bridge that molds over the mission creek river. we had then found several rocks with many thick layers . these thin layers of rock were formed many years ago inside the earth produced by a lot of pressure and heat.