Type Locality:

In the southern Flathead Range, on the Continental Divide near North Kootenay Pass, 2,200 m (7,216 ft) northeast of Mount Hollebeke; Sec. 14 of Price (1965).

Distribution:

The unit occurs throughout the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains west of (above) the Lewis thrust fault and south of about 50 deg N. It is 100 to 120 m (328 to 394 ft) thick in the Flathead Range; 150 m (492 ft) thick in the erosional outlier in the Lewis thrust sheet at Windsor Mountain in southwestern Alberta; and about 240 m (787 ft) thick in the western Rocky Mountains, near Elko, British Columbia (Price, 1962 and 1964). It generally is thicker where overlying beds of the Fairholme Group are in the shale facies rather than the carbonate facies.

Lithology:

The Hollebeke Formation comprises light and medium grey weathering, massive to nodular, dark grey and black, very fine-crystalline limestone; yellowish brown weathering, argillaceous and silty dolomite and limestone; and limestone and dolomite breccias that form the lower part of the Fairholme Group in the Flathead Range and adjacent areas. It is informally subdivided into two members. The lower member consists mainly of grey, yellowish grey and brownish grey, fine- and medium-crystalline dolomite and limestone that is locally silty or argillaceous, and contains interbeds of medium-crystalline, brownish grey limestone and dolomite, and of limestone and dolomite breccias that appear to be solution breccias. The upper member consists almost exclusively of dark grey and brownish black, fine- and very fine-crystalline (micritic) limestone that weathers massive to nodular, commonly with faint, fine laminations etched into relief on weathered surfaces; locally it contains thin beds and lenses of breccia that appear to be due to solution (of evaporites?).

Relationship:

Unconformably overlies the Middle Cambrian Windsor Mountain and Elko formations in the region southeast of Elko, British Columbia; north and west of Elko it truncates older Cambrian strata and unconformably overlies the middle part of the middle Proterozoic Purcell Supergroup (Leech, 1958; Norris and Price, 1966); but northwest of the Moyie-Dibble Creek fault it unconformably overlies Ordovician strata. The upper contact is a relatively abrupt gradation into the Borsato Formation.

Other Citations:

Leech, 1958; Norris and Price, 1966; Price, 1962, 1964b, 1965.

References:

Price, R.A., 1965. Flathead map-area, British Columbia and Alberta; Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 336.