Marvel Peak is a mountain summit located in the southern tip of

Banff National Park Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885 as Rocky Mountains Park. Located in Alberta's Rocky Mountains, west of Calgary, Banff encompasses of mountainous terrain, with many glaciers and ice fields, dense conif ...

, in the

Canadian Rockies The Canadian Rockies (french: Rocheuses canadiennes) or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost par ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. Marvel Peak is situated in the

Blue Range The Blue Range is a mountain range of the Canadian Rockies, located on the Continental Divide in Banff National Park, Canada. The range was so named on account of its blueish colour when viewed from afar. Mount Alcantara Mount Alcantara is a mo ...

, three kilometers from the

Continental Divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, no ...

, and not visible from any road. Marvel Peak's nearest higher peak is Wonder Peak, to the north-northwest.

History

Like so many of the mountains in and around

Kananaskis Country Kananaskis Country is a multi-use area west of Calgary, Alberta, Canada in the Rocky Mountain Foothills, foothills and front ranges of the Canadian Rockies. The area is named for the Kananaskis River, which was named by John Palliser in 1858 after ...

, Marvel Peak received its name from the persons and ships involved in the 1916

Battle of Jutland The Battle of Jutland (german: Skagerrakschlacht, the Battle of the Skagerrak) was a naval battle fought between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, under Vic ...

, the only major sea battle of the First World War. It was named in 1917 by the Interprovincial Boundary Survey after HMS ''Marvel'' which was a destroyer involved in the Battle of Jutland. An alternate view is the name is simply descriptive, similar to Wonder Peak to the north. The mountain's toponym was officially adopted in 1934 by the

Geographical Names Board of Canada The Geographical Names Board of Canada (GNBC) is a national committee with a secretariat in Natural Resources Canada, part of the Government of Canada, which authorizes the names used and name changes on official federal government maps of Can ...

Geology

Like other mountains in Banff Park, Marvel Peak is composed of

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particle ...

laid down during the

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of th ...

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

periods. Formed in shallow seas, this sedimentary rock was pushed east and over the top of younger rock during the

Laramide orogeny The Laramide orogeny was a time period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago. The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the o ...

Climate

Based on the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...

, Marvel Peak is located in a subarctic climate zone with cold, snowy winters, and mild summers. Winter temperatures can drop below with wind chill factors below . In terms of favorable weather, June through September are the best months to climb. Precipitation

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock market ...

from the mountain drains into Owl Creek and Marvel Creek, which find their way into Spray Lakes Reservoir.

Gallery

File:Marvel Peak, Alberta.jpg, North aspect of Marvel Peak above Marvel Lake File:Marvel Peak, ne.jpg, Marvel Peak seen from northeast. File:Marvel Lake and Lake Gloria aerial.jpg, Marvel Peak (left foreground) is near Marvel Lake (the long one) and Lake Gloria (behind).

References

External links