Observation Peak is a mountain summit located in Banff National Park,

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 Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. The mountain can be seen from the

Icefields Parkway Highway 93 is a north–south highway in Alberta, Canada. It is also known as the Banff-Windermere Parkway south of the Trans-Canada Highway ( Highway 1) and the Icefields Parkway north of the Trans-Canada Highway. It travels through ...

near the Bow Summit. The peak was named in 1898 by Charles L. Noyes, a Boston clergyman, who upon climbing to the top found it to have the best viewpoint he had ever reached. The mountain can be scrambled using the western slopes and after reaching the top of the false summit, a 20-minute plod to the northwest leads to the true summit about higher.

Geology

Like other mountains in Banff Park, the mountain is composed of

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles ...

laid down during the Precambrian to

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

periods. Formed in shallow seas, this sedimentary rock was pushed east and over the top of younger rock during the

Laramide orogeny The Laramide orogeny was a time period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago. The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the ...

Climate

Based on the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

, Observation Peak is located in a subarctic climate with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers. Temperatures can drop below -20 °C with wind chill factors below -30 °C.

Precipitation In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravitational pull from clouds. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. ...

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock marke ...

from Observation Peak drains into the Mistaya River, a tributary of the

North Saskatchewan River The North Saskatchewan River is a glacier-fed river that flows from the Canadian Rockies continental divide east to central Saskatchewan, where it joins with the South Saskatchewan River to make up the Saskatchewan River. Its water flows event ...

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite cgndb, id=IAMZT, name=Observation Peak, accessdate=2019-06-13 {{cite map, title=Bow Lake and Saskatchewan Crossing, section=, date=2000, scale=1:70,000, edition=2nd , publisher=Gem Trek Publishing, location=Cochrane, AB, isbn=1-895526-10-8 , url=https://www.gemtrek.com/maps/bow-lake-map/ , access-date=2019-06-13 {{cite book , title=

Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies ''Scrambles'' is the fifth studio album by Bomb the Music Industry!, released digitally and physically on February 15th, 2009. The album was released a year and a half after Get Warmer, making it the longest gap between the release of two chrono ...

, author=Kane, Alan , chapter = Observation Peak , publisher=Rocky Mountain Books, location = Calgary , year=1999, isbn=0-921102-67-4, page=298 {{cite peakfinder, id=990, name=Observation Peak, access-date=2012-06-29

External links

* Parks Canada web site
Banff National Park
Three-thousanders of Alberta Mountains of Banff National Park

Geology

Climate

References

See also

External links