![Sample our Environment & Sustainability journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5935/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Environment-Sustainability.jpg"})
Abstract
Castleguard Cave is developed in massive limestones of the upper Cathedral Formation (Middle Cambrian), overlain by shaly or dolomitic carbonates that function today as a leaky caprock. The cave contains ca. 18 km of explored passages, with a relief of 350 m. It displays three sections: (1) a headward complex beneath the Columbia Icefield, (2) a central, linear cave that passes through Castleguard Mountain, and (3) a downstream or entrance complex underlying the Meadows; part of this discharges floodwaters in summer. The remainder of the cave is hydrologically relict, except for local invasion waters.
Development of the central and downstream cave in vertical section was as a State 2 phreatic looping system, incorporating dip tube passages in four principal bedding planes that were connected together at three groundwater lifting sites. With enlargement, upstream portions of tubes underwent vadose entrenchment. A model for the plan development of the cave envisages an initial southwest system underneath the icefield. This was disrupted, probably by glacial injecta, and two new protocaves extended through the mountain towards “target” caves beneath the Meadows. Linkup of the protocaves via a sedimentary dike created the central cave.
Most of the cave was abruptly abandoned by the genetic waters. Later invasion waters from the Columbia Icefield and caprock have carved local shafts and trenches that direct flow to an inaccessible lower cave.