in Bow Valley Provincial Park The mountains that flank the park, such as
Mount Yamnuska, consist of resistant
Cambrian to
Devonian age
carbonate rocks that have been placed on top of softer
Late Cretaceous sandstones and
shales by the McConnell
Thrust Fault. That fault also provides a conduit for some of the
spring water that surfaces in the Many Springs area of the park. The spring water at Many Springs has a year-round temperature of about and does not freeze in the winter. It originates as
precipitation in the surrounding mountains and percolates down to a depth of about where it is warmed by
geothermal heat. It then circulates up along the plane of the McConnell Thrust, which passes under the park beneath Many Springs. After mixing with water from the
sand and
gravel deposits that underlie the Bow Valley, the spring water flows into the lake at a rate of about 100 L/sec (26 gal/sec). The park also features good examples of
fluvioglacial landforms that formed during the retreat of the Bow River valley glacier in the late
Pleistocene. These include Middle Lake, which is a
kettle lake that was formed by a large block of ice that had become detached from the retreating glacier. The block became surrounded by glacial outwash, and when it melted it left the depression that now holds the lake. There is also a variety of
kames,
eskers and
moraines in the park. ==Flora and fauna==