Marble Canyon Provincial Park British Columbia
Crown Lake in Marble Canyon Provincial Park B.C. in October 2019.
I was going to go plein air painting this morning and though it is not raining yet, Pavilion Lake is slate grey this morning with flexes of black where the hunter green hills dive their broken reflections into the water’s depths. For now, I have taken my coffee back to bed and will watch the lake out the large windows from this cozy vantage. Let’s see if we can learn a little bit more about where I am while we wait for the weather to lighten up.
The limestone canyon in which Marble Canyon Provincial Park is located is a rare geological formation in British Columbia. At its full height Marble Canyon is over 800 metres (>2,600 feet) high and many kilometres long. This canyon was once part of a Pacific island chain, another section of which lies in the northwest corner of the province.
Did you know that Pavilion Lake is of international importance and part of a NASA research project? I was so surprised to discover that it holds such significant mysteries way down underneath - freshwater microbialites. I am adding a photo from the NASA research gallery so you can see. The structures are of various shapes and sizes, some up to three meters high, and are estimated to have started forming 11,000 years ago after the glaciers receded from the area. The microbialites, are calcareous structures likely produced by microbial communities. Believed to be similar to some of the earliest life forms on earth, this lake is a potential window into ancient ecosystems on Earth and possibly early Mars. Pavilion Lake is one of only a few places in the world where these types of microbialite features can be found.
(Reference: research website for Pavilion Lake http://www.pavilionlake.com )
The lake falls within the traditional territory of the Ts’kw’aylaxw (pronounced “Ski-lak”) people, also known as the Pavilion First Nations Indian Band, who have a special heritage and spiritual connection to this lake and its surrounding land.
How is this for a grey morning discovery?
And it is still thunderously grey out the windows. Beautiful just the same.