Cuesta

In geology, the term is more specifically applied to a ridge where a harder sedimentary rock overlies a softer layer, the whole being tilted somewhat from the horizontal.

The outcrop of the caprock forms a steeper or even cliff-like frontslope (escarpment), cutting through the dipping strata that comprise the cuesta.

Because of the gently dipping nature of the strata that forms a cuesta, a significant shift in horizontal location will take place as the landscape is lowered by erosion.

In their most populated sections both escarpments edges face north, running roughly parallel to the southern Lake Ontario shoreline and, for the former, the Mohawk River.

Other examples include the Brecon Beacons, Wenlock Edge, the Chilterns, the North and South Downs and the Greensand Ridge of Kent and Surrey In continental Europe, the Swabian Alb offers particularly good views of cuestas in Jurassic rock.

The formation is one of the oldest exposed rock units in Southeast Asia and has an extensive eroded anticline cuesta topography—dating back to Cambrian.