Talk:Canadian Rockies

Range listing/hierarchy not complete

There's quite a bit of ranges missing here, mostly from the Northern Rockies - Muskwa Ranges, Hart Ranges; the ranges already listed here I've structured hierarchy listings for on Continental Ranges and its subpages, whichever may exist.Skookum1 06:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

re Marias Pass

RE this:

The southern boundary is somewhat arbitrary since the mountain trend continues on into the United States, but could be considered to be Marias Pass in Montana, which separates them from the geologically different American Rockies.

What's being referred to is not the Canadian Rockies, but the Continental Ranges which are the main body of them, south from the Robson area anyway (the Hart Ranges and Muskwa Ranges are the other two top-tier range groupings). The Front Ranges, known I think as the Clark Range in the US, cross the border where as noted their name-designation changes and the term "Canadian Rockies" ends, by definition (the other two subdivisions of the Continental Ranges are the Kootenay Ranges and the Park Ranges, neither of which cross the border). The confusion here is over the identification of the Canadian Rockies as the Continental Ranges, with Marias Pass as teh delimiter of the latter, and of the noted change in geology. Terms like Canadian Rockies, British Columbia Rockies, Idaho Rockies, Wyoming Rockies, are entirely and only defined by the political boundaries, not by geography.Skookum1 (talk) 14:56, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the difference is whether you use geological or political boundaries. Certainly, the political southern border of the Canadian Rockies is at the 49th parallel, but the geological trend (the Lewis Overthrust) doesn't stop at the border and continues 100 kilometres (60 mi) or so into Montana. At that point the geology changes, hence the geological distinction between the Canadian Rockies (limestone, heavily glaciated, formed by overthrusting) and the American Rockies (granite, relatively unglaciated, formed by uplifting).

The political boundaries are rather arbitrary. In addition to the 49th parallel being an imaginary line completely ignoring intersecting mountain ranges, the Great Divide chairlift at the Sunshine ski resort has a sign partway up saying "Welcome to British Columbia", and another further up saying "Welcome back to Alberta." Nobody's there to collect B.C. sales tax, so we don't make much distinction between Alberta Rockies and B.C. Rockies.

The term "continental ranges" is not in general use, particularly not in Alberta. Going east to west the categorization is usually: Rocky Mountain Foothills, Front Ranges, Main ranges, and (sometimes) Western Ranges. Going south to north they are: Southern Canadian Rockies (Marias Pass to Crowsnest Pass), Central Canadian Rockies (Crowsnest Pass to Peace River), and Northern Canadian Rockies (Peace River to Liard River).

Of course, what the Americans think of as the Northern Rockies are considered the Southern Rockies in Canada. The American definition of Rocky Mountains is also more expansive than the Canadian one, including, for instance, the Columbia Mountains which are considered a separate mountain system in Canada.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:47, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I just amended Continental Ranges to that effect, since the limited usage is noted in a citable reference (BCGNIS). The Northern Rockies though, in Canadian terms, begin at McGregor Pass, just SE of Mount Sir Alexander; this is in Holland, which is why Bivouac.com also says that. "Western Ranges" I think Holland provides as an alternate name for the Kootenay Ranges. Similarly about cross-border name changes/classifications, the McDonald Range (in Canada) is I think the Clark Range in Montana.....also worth noting hte BC govenrment's attempt to rebrand teh Purcells/Selkirks as "Kootenay Rockies" as a name for that region...and also that SFAIK whiel the Cabinets and Salish Mtns and the US Percells are considered to be Rockies, the spur of the Selkirks that comes down close to Spokane isn't.....and there's nomenclature issues with Cascade Range/Mountains of course......same applies with geographic and geologic provinces, e.g. Pacific Coast Ranges/Pacific Mountain System and so on.....it would help if geographers and geologists would come up with a unified terminology/toponym for landforms, but history/politics seem to play a big part, even today.Skookum1 (talk) 19:10, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Additional on formation

This page is a little lacking in details on how the range was exactly formed. The Canadians rockies, i believe, were formed by the accretion of several microcontinents to the edge of north america, these mountains represent the collision between these microcontinents and NA, as i understand it.The mountains represent the old edge of north america and the lithotechtonic border between the precambrian north american craton and later added microcontinents that underlay british columbia. A subduction front in an ancient ocean basin subducted that ocean and pulled the microcontinents onto the edge of north america. This makes them of a different nature to the american rockies. The american rockies were formed most likely by an unusual subduction of the farallon oceanic plate underneath north america. Plates tend to dive into the earths crust at an angle so they n tend to not scrape along the underside of a continental plate for very far. However with the farallon plate, the plate scraped along the underside of north america pushing up the rocky mountains deep into the precambrian north american craton. This may have been due to, from what i have heard, north american being pushed on top of the oceanic plate, or a shallow angle of subduction. The edge of the american rockies are therefore not a lithotechtonic boundary but lie deep within the north american craton. Millueradfa (talk) 19:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Goals in re-organizing article

I've re-arranged the sections of the article, and moved the non-text parts to list articles. I'm hoping by doing this, editors can continue to broaden the article. For example, compare this article to Rocky Mountains: notice that that other article has extensive sections on Human History, Tourism, and Industrial Development. I don't have any handy reference material for such sections, but I bet other editors do. —hike395 (talk) 20:28, 1 January 2010 (UTC)