Castles & karst |
tHE CAVE
Castleguard Cave is well known to cavers around the world. In addition to being Canada's longest cave, it is the only cave in the world with passages plugged by ice pushed in from a surface icefield. Because the entrance floods unpredictably, Castleguard Cave can only be safely visited in winter, which enhances its remote, beautiful setting.
![Picture](/uploads/5/0/4/5/50450907/7661926.jpg?1430967529)
Castleguard Cave is developed in large limestones of the upper Cathedral Formation, 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.
(3) An entrance complex underlying the Meadows; part of this discharges flood waters in summer. The remainder of the cave is hydrologically relict, except for local invasion waters.
It displays three sections:
(1) A headward complex beneath the Columbia Icefield,
(2) A central, linear cave that passes through Castleguard Mountain.
(3) An entrance complex underlying the Meadows; part of this discharges flood waters in summer. The remainder of the cave is hydrologically relict, except for local invasion waters.
![Picture](/uploads/5/0/4/5/50450907/1261789.jpg?1430968421)
The accessible, explored portion of the cave, referred to as Castleguard I, is an abandoned drain. Research suggests that an underlying cave, Castleguard II, carries the current glacial drainage, which resurges at Big Springs. A third cave system, Castleguard III, collects surface melt from Castleguard Meadows at right-angles to the main cave, joining it somewhere prior to the Big Springs resurgence. Castleguard III has not been explored, though dye tracing does reinforce its existence.
The central portion of the cave consists of a single main passage alternating between long sections of vadose passages linked by shorter phreatic sections.