This established GCR site lies at the northern end of the Torridon hills overlooking Loch Maree. The site contains a klippe largely composed of Torridonian sandstones, part of the regionally important Kinlochewe Thrust Sheet, together with well exposed folds and thrusts in the underlying Cambrian sediments.
The area offers excellent opportunities for appreciation of the structural relationships between major thrust sheets and relatively minor imbricate thrusts. The fine exposures within the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve have attracted numerous geological visitors, largely to obtain views across to the famous landscapes on the north side of Loch Maree. However, the geology within the site is important for understanding how thrusts link up and relate to one another. The Kinlochewe Thrust can be demonstrated to have formed early and to have been folded during the formation of underlying structures. These types of observations are fundamental in the reconstruction of the geometric evolution and timing of formation of different parts of a thrust belt. The site also raises important issues for thrust and fault mechanics. The trajectory of Kinlochewe Thrust preserved in its hanging-wall alternates between sediments and basement gneisses which have radically different rheologies. There is much debate in structural geology about the applicability of thrust geometries derived from regions of deformed cover sediments to structures involving basement. As with some other major thrusts in NW Scotland, the Kinlochewe Thrust, accompanied by narrow zones of mylonitisation, undoubtedly localised in rocks which did not have a pre-existing bedding anisotropy. The structures within the Kinlochewe area, like those in the Glencoul district of the Moine Thrust Belt, provide fruitful areas of future studies of thrust mechanics and the rheology of the upper continental crust in mountain belts.
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