Castlewood Canyon is filled with erosional landforms. The most outstanding physical feature in Castlewood Canyon comes from the conglomerate caprock. These rocks, due to joints and fractures caused by frost wedging, create rock fall all around the canyon. It is littered with sedimentary boulders to tiny bits of rhyolite. The rock fall creates colluvium at the base of some of the slopes and talus in every corner of the canyon. The talus is made of a large number of boulders that designate trails and the overland flow of the creek.

Some of these beautiful  boulders have alveoli and many show further signs of frost weathering.


The water cuts a narrow path through the canyon that weaves through the toppled rock and debris. There are sand pits above the water table where it is obvious water once flowed with much more velocity for a long period of time.

In my experience, there are times when the water is ankle deep and if you walk up stream from the main waterfall, you can feel a distinctly colder flow of water that comes from deep underneath a specific rock. Groundwater is colder than surface water which leads me to believe the water table here is being fed by groundwater which would make it an effluent stream. There is also evidence of historically frequent flash floods.  In this arid climate, the permeability of the rock and soil in the canyon is low. There are rills in the slopes where water from the top of the canyon joins the creek. Debris can still be found amongst the boulders.

Another significant characteristic of the canyon is in the steep slopes above the water. They are layered in many strata and can be classified as Mollisol as a result of calcification. They show healthy vegetation in the O -Horizon and a darker humus A-Horizon. Most of these slopes seem to have been revealed by translational slides that have created colluvium at the bottom. Most of this colluvium has been taken by the water and deposited as alluvium. Other slopes around the canyon are rotational slumps and appear rounded.

 

--All photos taken by me! The blogger site will not allow me to change the size of my pictures, sorry for the size!