PORT TOWNSEND — Canadian volcanologist and geoscience educator Melanie Kelman will lead an audience on a virtual geo-tour along the popular Sea to Sky Highway, from Vancouver through Whistler to Pemberton at 4 p.m. Saturday.
This illustrated presentation will be at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2333 San Juan Ave.
The presentation, hosted by Jefferson Land Trust Geology Group, will be free and open to the public, although $5 donations would be appreciated to defray expenses.
British Columbia’s Sea to Sky Highway (99) connecting Vancouver to Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton, provides a journey through the geology of British Columbia’s Coastal Mountains where relief from valley floors to summits is commonly 4,500-6,000 feet.
The highway follows the steep fjord walls of Howe Sound, past waterfalls, debris flow-prone gullies, rockfalls, glacial erosion features and the Britannia Beach copper mine, operational until 1974, before arriving in Squamish.
The town of Squamish sits at the head of Howe Sound near the 2,100-feet-high cliffs of the granitic monolith — the Stawamus Chief — as well as the dormant volcano, Mount Garibaldi.
North of Squamish, the Sea to Sky Highway leaves Howe Sound, climbs from a floodplain and winds its way through the Cheakamus River canyon. Spectacular views of the mountains and glaciers of the Tantalus Range emerge to the west.
At Brandywine Falls, the Brandywine River cascades over a stack of basaltic lava flows and drops 210 feet into a canyon. A series of lava flows of Cheakamus basalt next to the highway shows evidence of eruption beneath or beside ice in glacial times.
In Whistler, the ski gondolas provide broad views of the geology of the Coast Range, including Mount Cayley volcano, about nine miles west of Whistler. North of Whistler, Nairn Falls, 1 mile from the highway, has numerous large potholes and other features eroded by water.
The town of Pemberton at the end of the GeoTour lies about 36 miles southeast of the Mount Meager volcano, which in 2010 was the source of the largest historic landslide in Canada, about 63 million cubic yards.
Kelman completed her doctorate at the University of British Columbia in 2005, where she studied the Mount Cayley volcanic field.
Her first geologic encounters came as a child, when her father, a rock collector, took the family to quarries, gravelly lakeshores and mine dumps all over western Canada and the U.S.
Kelman started work in October 2007 with Natural Resources Canada in Vancouver. She currently devotes her time to volcanic-hazard research, volcano emergency planning, and preparation of educational materials.
If volcanic activity were to occur again in Canada, she would play a major role in monitoring, hazard assessment and eruption forecasting, according to a news release.
