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in parts of only two provinces,
the Montane Cordillera offers the most varied –
and some of the most awe-inspiring – landscapes
in all of Canada.
Almost two-thirds of this region, in the east, is made
up of the Canadian Rockies, which actually consist of
a number of different mountain groups. Located west
of the Columbia River, in southeastern British Columbia,
are the glacier-clad Purcell, Selkirk, Monashee, and
Cariboo ranges, known collectively as the Columbia Mountains.
This is a stunning area of icefields, sharp-edged ridges,
and steep valleys, some of them “hanging,”
or suspended high above the level of yet other valleys.
Squeezed, fjord-like, between the high Columbia ranges
are long, narrow lakes such as Kootenay and Arrow. And
two of Canada’s great rivers, the Fraser and Columbia,
wind their way though the area as they head west and
south, respectively, to the Pacific Ocean.
East of the Columbia Mountains lie the parallel |
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The Montane Cordillera
ecozone is famous for its enormous mountains and numerous
glaciers. The glaciers were formed around 20,000 years
ago, when the climate was much cooler. How glaciers formed:
if more snow falls in winter than melts the following
summer, the heavy surface snow compacts the underlying
snow, turning it to ice. If there is a lot of this compacted
ice on a mountain slope, the pressure of the upper layer
of icy snow, along with gravity, causes the lower ice
to move. A moving mass of ice is called a glacier. |
| Image © Good
Earth Productions Inc. |
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