Gorge Landforms in Cangshan Mountain

    About from 23 million to 1.8 million (late mid-Pleistocene-late Pleistocene) years ago, India plate and Eurasia plate had an intense collision and left behind many planes of fracture or fracture zones on rocks. Ice, snow and rain eroded the rocks along the facture zones, so the grand mountains are formed based on the former steep glacial landforms. Flowing water made the increasingly deep valley. That is how the river eroded V-shape valleys come into being. And many V shape valleys are overlapped with U shape valleys. The rocks on the valley faces are formed about 2 billion years ago.

     Gorge landforms in Cangshan Mountain-headwater erosion is the reason for gorge forming on the east and west slopes of Cangshan Mountain. The over 2000 meters high fall is distributed in a distance no more than meters, and this makes waterfalls and streams follow with each other. Flowing water eroded the valley along the weak zones or cross faults, so gorge landforms come into being.

      Shimenguan Pass

    Shimenguan is at the southern end of the western slope of Cangshan Mountain, at the entrance of the gorge. Cliffs stand at both sides of the pass, towering and spectacular, just like a giant gate, so it is called Shimenguan (“stone gate”) Pass. The altitude difference from the peak to the bottom of Shimenguan is about 500 meters, and the narrowest width is only 6 meters at the bottom. Shimenguan Gorge is the result of an extension fracture passing through the mountain massif, and rupturing it. After years of water erosion along the fracture surface and gravitational collapse, it became a deep and narrow gorge.

Shimenguan Pass

    Qingbixi Gorge

    Qingbixi Gorge lies between Malongfeng Peak and Shengyingfeng Peak. It was formed by the Himalayan orogeny within the last 50 million years. Cangshan Mountain is cut into transmeridional fractures during the uplifting process, and also influenced by water corrosion, glacial scour, and gravity collapse, thereby forming the gorge. The altitude difference between the peak and the gorge bottom is about 150 meters, and the gorge floor is 5 meters wide. The rocks on the precipice were formed during the Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 billion years ago. They were originally sedimentary rock, and turned into metamorphic rocks through the late metamorphism.

Qingbixi Gorge