HISTORY OF A VOLCANO
  GENERAL PRESENTATION
  GEOLOGICAL FORMATION

  THE MAIN PEAKS AND VALLEYS
The Cantalien landscape is both volcanic and mountainous which gives it its highly original character. It bestows a genuinely alpine appearance on the massif as a whole, even though the latter is categorised as highland with the culminating point at an altitude of 1855 metres (Plomb du Cantal).

Several volcanic eras spanning approximately ten million years make for an extraordinary past:
• Between 13 and 9 M (Million years BC): first eruptions, which are barely visible today in a terrain buried beneath subsequent eruptions.
• Between 9 and 6.5 M: success eruptions ultimately forming the strato volcano*, in other words, a structure in which several layers of different types of lava exist side by side. This lava came from a complex network of eruptive craters still evident in the landscape, for example Puy Mary, Puy Griou, Roc d’Hozière, etc.
• Between 8 and 7 M: at the same time as the volcano was being formed, certain parts underwent cataclysmic destruction with entire sides of volcanoes collapsing (detritus avalanches).

• Between 7 and 3 M: last volcanic phase during which huge quantities of lava flowed slowly out from the central volcano to form vast plateaux: planèzes.
• During the quaternary glaciations, the glaciers scraped and gouged the strato volcano for nearly 100,000 years, thereby forming immense U-shaped valleys* and highly tapered, pointed peaks (“Horn*” du Puy Mary, etc.).
Knowing a little about the Cantalien volcanic massif’s geological past helps better understand this landscape that now leave us in awe (peaks, valleys, waterfalls, etc.).
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