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Terzaghi (Geotechnique 12 (1962) 251) and Young (Young, A., 1972. Slopes. Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 288 pp.) described the stable forms of slopes in sedimentary rock masses, assuming penetrative discontinuities, which are parallel to bedding and joints which are perpendicular to bedding. The only movements considered were slides along bedding. Experience in the Canadian Rockies indicates that the cohesionless rock masses that exist at or above tree line may also move by toppling, buckling and sliding along joints. These processes also act to limit the inclinations of stable slopes. Rock strength is a factor in the critical height of a slope that buckles. The processes can be represented as fields on a process diagram, a plot of slope inclination against bedding dip, using the basic friction angles of the rocks present.The process diagram also separates five common mountain peak shapes, which form on homoclinal sequences of beds. Castellate and Matterhorn mountains occur in sub-horizontal beds, cuestas develop in gently to moderately dipping beds. Hogbacks formed in moderately to steeply dipping beds have similar slope angles on both cataclinal and anaclinal slopes. Dogtooth mountains occur in steeply dipping sub-vertical beds. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A deflection of the fault controlled southwestern coastline of Vancouver Island suggests the presence of a minor orocline, with a Southern Crustal Block (south of Barkley Sound–Alberni Inlet) rotated 20° counterclockwise relative to a Northern Fixed Crustal Block about a pole of rotation located northeast of Port Alberni. In this paper two models of orocline development, one of pure block rotation and one of pure bending, are proposed. The predictions of these models are tested against available geological maps, structural orientation data, identified regions of extension and contraction, and paleomagnetic data. Structural orientation and paleomagnetic data are consistent with 18° of post-Late Cretaceous counter clockwise rotation of the Southern Crustal Block relative to the Northern Fixed Crustal Block. A southward increase in the magnitude of rotation evident in the structural orientation data argues for a model of bending. Both bending and block rotation models predict the development of a zone of contraction along the northeast margin of the Southern Crustal Block, coincident with the location of the Eocene Cowichan fold-and-thrust belt, that diminishes northward toward the pole of rotation. As predicted, the fold-and-thrust belt is characterized by a northerly decrease in the amount of shortening, from >30% at the south end of the thrust belt, to 0% shortening north of Port Alberni. The northerly decrease in shortening is complemented by a north to south change in structural style from cylindrical to conical folds, and finally to planar, undeformed strata. The model of block rotation predicts the presence of a zone of extension extending southwest from the zone of rotation, coincident with the location of Eocene extensional structures within Barkley Sound and with horst and graben structures in the offshore Eocene to Miocene Tofino basin. Extension is less than predicted by a model of pure block rotation and suggests that much of the oroclinal rotation was accommodated by bending. Timing constraints indicate that orocline development was coeval with, and resulted from, the Eocene accretion of seamounts of the Crescent terrane. These findings demonstrate that oroclinal orogeny, the buckling of a linear crustal beam about vertical axes of rotation, can significantly impact the geometry, structure and character of an orogenic belt, even where the buckles are minor (<20° of rotation). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]