Skihist Railway Crew

Description

This image is 48 x 24-inches (122 x 61cm) in size. Canvas prints are sold stretched or un-stretched. Stretched prints are available for pick up only in Vancouver. Addresses further afield will get unstretched canvases and paper prints rolled up in a tube for shipping. Instructions for stretching/framing will be included in the shipping tube.

This image does not have a gallery or image wrapped edge. The edges of this image are black.

This image was taken from a little provincial park on Highway 1 in British Columbia. The park, Skihist Provincial Park, is named for its excellent view of Skihist Mountain which is visible from the park though on the opposite side of the Thompson River. That’s a CP Rail line running along the cliff face just about the river -and not a road.

What strikes me about this rock face is the colour and texture of the whole thing. Kind of like my photo of The Chief but in shades of grey and brown with highlights of that rusted railway avalanche shed and the beautiful contrast of the Thompson River in the foreground. I was actually waiting for a big old Rocky Mountain freight train to come through here for my photo. But when I saw the maintenance crew in their little trucks, I knew there would not be a train coming by anytime soon.

From what I’ve found online, these cliffs are composed of gneiss rock and are estimated to be about 225 million years old.  Gneiss rock is formed when existing rock is subjected to intense heat and pressure like during a tectonic process or when it’s buried under younger rock.

These cliffs are a good example of banded gneiss. The lighter bands are made up of quartz and feldspar while the darker sections are made of amphibolite. The darker brown sections are remnants of volcanic dykes or vents. Millions of years ago, lava found its way up the surface through cracks in the gneiss.