Crowsnest Mountain is a

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited Summit (topography), summit area, and ...

in the southern

Canadian Rockies The Canadian Rockies (french: Rocheuses canadiennes) or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost part ...

of southwestern

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Canada. It can be seen from

Alberta Highway 3 Alberta Provincial Highway No. 3, commonly referred to as Highway 3 and officially named the Crowsnest Highway, is a highway that traverses southern Alberta, Canada, running from the Crowsnest Pass through Lethbridge to the Trans-C ...

west of the town of Coleman in the

Crowsnest Pass Crowsnest Pass (sometimes referred to as Crow's Nest Pass, french: link=no, col du Nid-de-Corbeau) is a low mountain pass across the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies on the Alberta–British Columbia border. Geography The pass i ...

. The mountain was originally named by the Ktunaxa First Nations due to

raven A raven is any of several larger-bodied bird species of the genus ''Corvus''. These species do not form a single taxonomic group within the genus. There is no consistent distinction between "crows" and "ravens", common names which are assigned t ...

s nesting in the area. The scrambling route on the north side was first ascended in 1915.

Geology

The grey rocks exposed in the cliffs on the upper part of Crowsnest Mountain are

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

s and

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

s of

Late Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya. It is named after Devon, England, wher ...

to Early Mississippian age (the Palliser at the base, overlain by the

Exshaw Exshaw is a hamlet in Alberta, Canada within Municipal District (MD) of Bighorn No. 8. Located approximately west of downtown Calgary and east of Canmore, Exshaw is situated within the Bow River valley north of the Bow River. The hamlet was ...

and Banff, with the Livingstone Formation at the summit). They were moved up from the west along the Lewis

thrust fault A thrust fault is a break in the Earth's crust, across which older rocks are pushed above younger rocks. Thrust geometry and nomenclature Reverse faults A thrust fault is a type of reverse fault that has a dip of 45 degrees or less. If ...

and emplaced over younger rocks (the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...

Belly River Formation The Belly River Group is a stratigraphical unit of Late Cretaceous age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It takes the name from the Belly River, a tributary of the Oldman River in southern Alberta, and was first described in outcrop ...

) that underlie the wooded lower slopes of the mountain. During that movement they were formed into a broad

syncline In structural geology, a syncline is a fold with younger layers closer to the center of the structure, whereas an anticline is the inverse of a syncline. A synclinorium (plural synclinoriums or synclinoria) is a large syncline with superimpose ...

by fault-bend folding.R.A.Price, 1961. Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 61-24 and Map 35-1961.R.A. Price, 1962. Geologic structure of the central part of the Rocky Mountains in the vicinity of Crowsnest Pass. Journal of the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists, vol. 10, no. 7, p. 341-351. The Devonian to Mississippian rocks are part of the Lewis

thrust sheet In geology, a nappe or thrust sheet is a large sheetlike body of rock that has been moved more than or above a thrust fault from its original position. Nappes form in compressional tectonic settings like continental collision zones or on the o ...

which was originally continuous from the

High Rock Range The High Rock Range is a mountain range of the Canadian Rockies in southwestern Alberta and southeastern British Columbia, Canada. It is a part of the Southern Continental Ranges and is located on the Continental Divide, north of the Crowsnest ...

immediately to the west. The thrust sheet has since been cut through by erosion along Allison Creek, however, leaving Crowsnest Mountain and its northerly neighbour,

Seven Sisters Mountain Seven Sisters Mountain is a mountain summit located in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada. Description Seven Sisters Mountain is situated northwest of the town of Coleman in the Crowsnest Pass area and can be seen from Highway 3, the C ...

, standing together as an isolated

klippe 350px, Schematic overview of a thrust system. The shaded material is called a window_(geology).html"_;"title="nappe._The_erosional_hole_is_called_a__window_(geology)">window_or_fenster._The_klippe_is_the_isolated_block_of_the_nappe_overlying_aut ...

References

{{Canadian Rockies, state=collapsed Two-thousanders of Alberta Canadian Rockies