Rex Trulove
This is Grinnell Point and Swiftcurrent Lake. The elevation is 4,878 feet and the temperature is 38 F. Notice the striations on the mountains. These are the bands or lines that move in a diagonal line across the cliff face, shown clearly by the snow.
When the rock was originally laid down, long ago, those lines would have been horizontal. This gives a good visual to show the main way that the Rockies were formed. That is, they were “scrunched up”. It is the sort of thing that happens if you push opposite sides of a piece of paper toward the center, causing the middle of the paper to rise.
Paper is limber, though, and rock is rigid. The process of upheaval caused the rock to break and since it was pushed up at different speeds and by different amounts, the once horizontal layers of rock are displayed at an angle. Most of this rock is actually sedimentary, laid down long ago as sediments on the bottom of a vast inland sea that once covered most of what is now the US.
The contrast between the formation of the Cascade Mountains near the west coast of the US is remarkable. The Cascades were formed volcanically.
