Continental Ranges of the Rockies, which boast the highest peak in the Montane Cordillera, Mount Robson, at 3954 metres above sea level. These ranges, which straddle the British Columbia / Alberta border, contain the Continental Divide, the watershed which splits the western and eastern drainage basins of North America.

Like the Columbia Mountains, the ranges are heavily glaciated, but the bedrock here is not the hard granite, quartzite, and schist of the British Columbia mountains (some of which date back 800 million years). The rock in this area is sedimentary and generally younger (as young as 100 million years!). But the rugged landscape – with its high peaks, U-shaped valleys, and striking blue bodies of water like Lake Louise – is nonetheless spectacular. No fewer than four National Parks are located here: Banff, Jasper, and Waterton Lakes, in Alberta; and Yoho, in British Columbia. Together with Mount Revelstoke, Glacier, and

Kootenay National Parks in the Columbia Mountains, this group represents the highest concentration of such parks in any ecozone in the country – and one of the largest protected natural areas in the world. The western third of the Montane Cordillera is made up mainly of the Fraser Plateau in the north and the Thompson-Okanagan Plateau in the south. 60 million years ago, volcanic activity provided the area’s basaltic bedrock, which was subsequently overlaid with glacial deposits. The legacy today is a generally flat or rolling landscape, elevated to between 1150 and 1800 metres, with long, narrow lakes, such as Kamloops and Okanagan, and deep river gorges like Hell’s Gate. The narrowest point in Fraser Canyon – just 33 metres wide but 1000 metres deep – Hell’s Gate is a funnel for the waters of a river drainage basin extending for 235,000 square kilometres into the interior of British Columbia.

The varied physical nature of the Montane Cordillera is also reflected in its climate. The Coast Mountains, in the Pacific Maritime