On the Rocks
October 2007

Road Log for the Oct. 6 Field Trip
by Leopold Hayden Powell

Stories In the Earth
The Kootenay Arc
Road Log, October 6, 2007

These stories start 700,000,000 years ago. Some of them are continuing, today. The stories, once written, may change. We take advantage of new information and new ways of understanding.

0.0 Start, north on Main Street at Ivy

0.3 Ascend an 8 Ka terrace of the Colville River, Between Columbia and Birch Streets 0.6 Turn right on Sixth Street

0.7 Turn right on Oak Street. Park near the middle of the block, to see the archaeocyathids, in the Reeves Member of the Maitlen Formation.

Proceed, south on Oak Street.

0.9 Turn left on Third Street (WA Highway 20).

1.5 Ascend the face of a 15KA delta built by glacial out-wash, into Lake Colville. The rough beds of gravel, at Madison Street and Silke Road, dip 7o to the northwest. These are the stones deposited on the inside of a right bend of the glacial stream.

Colville Valley Concrete quarried the last of their gravel, here, in 1999. Since then they have mined the next older terrace, 1.8 miles east of here.

3.0 Turn left, north, on Aladdin Road.

3.6 You are crossing a recessional moraine. The ice tongue advanced, bulldozing detritus into this ridge. Between floodings of Lake Colville, the moraine was breached by flowing melt water.

5.0 Keep to the left, onto Douglas Falls Road.

5.1 Cross Mill Creek. Most of the rocks that are clearly exposed are the massive, lower layers of Addy Quartzite. Those are recrystallized from beach and foreshore sandstone. Covered intervals are the younger, Early Cambrian part of the Addy and Maitlen Formation.

8.1 Turn left, into Douglas Falls Park, and park near the overlook. We will walk down to the fall. This is a good point to see the sedimentary structures in the Addy Quartzite.

Return to Douglas Falls Road and Aladdin Road.

13.4 Turn left, northeast, onto Aladdin Road.

14.2 Park, on the left, at the first turnout beyond the slabby outcrop. Walk back, to examine the small fold, in the lower member of the Metaline Formation. Such small folds form, on the limbs of kilometer-scale folds, to accommodate the sliding force of successive layers being bent to smaller radii, toward the axis of the large fold. The Lower Metaline is variably bedded limestone. Its Middle Cambrian age was determined from trilobite fossils, at Metaline Falls.

16.2 The springs, in these cuts and ditches, form as water seeping through coarse gravel of the Finley Gulch Fan meets the silt layers of the Lake Colville beds. The two units inter-finger. The lake bed were at least 65 meters deeper, before melt-water streams carved them away.

19.0 As the road curves to the northwest, Little Roundtop comes into view. The layers of Maitlen Phyllite are difficult to distinguish, where they dip 70o west on the west side. The structure is clearer, on the east side, where the dip is 45o west and overturned. You are looking along the axis of an overturned anticline.

20.6 Turn left, onto Joe Creek Road. Cross the North Fork, Mill Creek.

20.8 Park, near the driveway to the left. This is the access to the Shoemaker Mine. Miners drove a drift designed to intersect the 60o dipping ore, then stope upward and sink a shaft on the ore below. Before encountering the ore horizon, the shaft ended at a fault, which cut off the ore.

We will look at a road cut, exposing the same rocks as the ore-bearing layer, in the mine. This is the "Yellowhead Horizon", nearly the top of the Lower Member of the Metaline Formation. Some of the sedimentary structures are clue to the environment and "way-up" indicators.

Return to Aladdin Road.

21.0 Keep far right to make the sharp turn, as wide as possible. Turn left, onto Aladdin Road.

23.0 Cross the North Fork, Mill Creek. Gravel layers in the valley train drain much of the summer flow, from the creek. It was larger, at the last crossing mostly due to flow returning through the fan gravel of Joe Creek. Decades of farming and grazing have nearly obliterated the channel.

24.0 This curve takes us, away from the North Fork and up Marble creek, and the abandoned valley of Cy Creek

24.5 Cross Marble Creek.

25.2 Park in the turnouts, to the right. After the de-glaciation, Cy Creek flowed southwest, to North Fork. A small North Fork tributary uncovered the ancient gorge, and captured Cy Creek. The rock is the bedded dolomite, Middle Member of the Metaline Formation. It is intensely recrystallized, at the hinge of an overturned syncline.

25.7 This is a very confusing drainage pattern. Glacial erosion and deposition altered the former pattern. The former divide was between Kolle Creek and Clinton Creek, and a pass between Rabbit Mountain and Bon Ayre Ridge. The glacier cut down the dividing ridges; then, left behind piles of moraine debris. Over the next mile you see Kolle Creek flow north, diverging from Cy Creek.

27.1 Just to the right, Clinton Creek joins Kolle Creek to form the South Fork, Deep Creek.

27.2 Turn left to park in the entrance to Forest Service road 7000-500, Kolle Creek Road. Both this road and the Aladdin Road were reconstructed, since the geologic map was made. Better exposures reveal mapping errors. This is Maitlen, rather than Metaline. We can see the evidence that the structure is not overturned, and the Clinton Creek fault should be inferred, as far as the South Fork Valley.



Continue northeast.

Watch in the pastures and clear-cuts, for the next mile and one-half, for the tortuous drainage, through moraine ridges. The ice front must have lingered here, before rapidly melting back beyond Meadow Creek.

30.1 Park along the right shoulder. The Aladdin Meadow was bounded by the gravel fan of Meadow Creek and filled by sediment from Rocky Creek. It is hard to tell when, before 1880, the South Fork cut down two meters and drained the wet meadow. The mining town of Aladdin grew, during World War I. Farmers did not have to drain the land, to produce meat and hay for the miners and their horses. The stream cut another meter, after the disastrous fires of the 1930's. Heavy grazing has kept the stream and riparian community from building up the gradient, since then.

32.8 Cross Meadow Creek.

33.2 The County gravel pit exploits the alluvial fan of Meadow Creek. When the low ice front was about one-half mile north, precipitation was heavy and Meadow Creek carried large amounts of gravel. It fed a lake, in the Aladdin Meadow and swapped courses between the Blue Ridge Valley and the kame field, along the road.

34.8 The Blue Ridge Mine is directly west and slightly above the Valley floor. It was a major producer of lead and zinc, during both World Wars and into the 1950's. The ore body was in the Reeves Limestone. Both the ore and country rock were altered, by the hydrothermal fluids from the Spirit Pluton.

35.3 East and above is the Copper King Mine. It was a minor producer of zinc and copper. The ore was a stockwork of veins, along the contact between the Spirit Pluton and the Middle Metaline Dolomite.

36.3 The road curves around a ridge, which looks like a moraine. It is the deposit of a de-glaciation landslide, moving from the west. The scarp shows as a ragged alcove, on the topographic map.

38.6 Turn right, on Smackout Creek Road. Park near the fire station. The excavation exposes foreset beds of a delta. These beds dip 12; whereas, point bar beds dip about 7o. Continue north.

38.8 Turn right on the Deep Lake Boundary Road. Park near the intersection. The boulders and glacier planed outcrops are quartz-monzonite of the Spirit Pluton. This composite of felsic rocks underlies 100 square miles. It intruded, at depth, between 99 and 101 million years ago. The phases range from early grano-diorite to late granite aplite. Quartz-monzonite consists of alkali feldspar, calcic plagioclase and quartz. This rock is significantly low in uranium and thorium, compared to earlier and later felsic rocks, in this region.

The Spirit Meadow was drained, for farming, with ditches on the north and south. Energy, which was not dissipated in the ditches, incised these meanders. Flooding, in 1999, formed fresh cut-banks and point bars.

31.5 Deep Lake lies in a glacier scoured depression. Its level is controlled by a Washington Department of Natural Resources weir. Lead-zinc mines are scattered, to the southwest and southeast.

31.8 Park in the entrance of the gravel pit. The outcropping rock, to the west, is Ledbetter Slate. It is Early to Middle Ordovician. The fossils are mostly obscured, by the slaty cleavage. Some localities have abundant graptolites, or a few straight-shelled cephalopods. The lower part of the Ledbetter overlaps, in age, with the Upper and part of the Middle Metaline. The two formations are nearly always in fault contact.

The gravel pit shows several sedimentary features.

33.7 Park near the rock cut. These are kink and chevron folds in the Upper Limestone Member of the Metaline Formation. This style of folding forms when the force is near the plane of the layers, in repeated episodes. The Upper Member has several, very productive ore hosting horizons.

35.1 Cross Silver Creek. The name was wishful thinking. Most of the local ore is low in silver. Leadpoint was a boomtown, during World War I. War efforts required huge amounts of lead. Most was not for bullets, but for paint, and later, batteries. The basis for ship's anti-fouling bottom paint is lead arsenide and lead sulfate. Gladstone Mountain and Red Top Mountain host dozens of mines.

36.2 The Calhoon Mine produced zinc and lead for a few years, in the 1950's. The ore pods were too small and scattered to be profitable. The mill was refitted, in 180, to beneficiate barite. That too proved to be sub-economic, due to competition from imports.

38.6 Stop in the turnout, beyond the white outcrop. This rock is more typical of the Reeves Member, especially in British Columbia, where it is called the Badshot Formation. Return to the Spirit Junction.

44.4 Bear right on Aladdin Road.

48.9 The Deep Creek Mine (shaft and portal at the base of the west slope) was an important zinc-lead producer, through the 1950's. American Smelting and Refining owned this property, so concentrates were smelted at East Helena, Montana and El Paso, Texas. Other mines shipped ore or concentrates to the Northport Smelter, 1895-1924; or Cominco-Trail, British Columbia, 1924 and later.

49.4 Ruins of the Black Rock Mine are on the right.

49.7 The rocks, in this northwest trending belt, are various argillite, meta-wacke and meta-carbonate. Microfossils, aged Middle Devonian to Lower Carboniferous, are scattered through very complex structure. Most of the fossils belong to Asian or mixed, rather than North American faunas.

52.5 Junction with Highway 25, Center Avenue, Northport. End the trip, one-half block right, at Northern Ales.

Thanks! For coming along.

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