[Notes 1][1][failed verification] In 1858 John Palliser renamed[1] the mountain after Reverend Robert Rundle, a Methodist invited by the Hudson's Bay Company to do missionary work in western Canada in the 1840s.

[2][5] West of the Spray Lakes road is the East End of Rundle— locally known as EEOR[Notes 3]—which rises above Whiteman's Gap just south of Canmore.

In ascending order, they belong to the Palliser, Exshaw and Banff Formations, topped by the Rundle Group, which was named after the mountain.

[8] The basal "slice of bread" is the lower massive cliffs of tough grey Pallister Formation limestones and dolomites.

[8] The "sandwich filling" is the Banff Formation, a layer of softer, more easily eroded, dark brownish-gray to black calcareous shale with thin beds of argillaceous limestone.

Between the Palliser and the Banff lie the thin, recessive shales of the Exshaw Formation (the "lettuce leaf" of the sandwich), covered with debris from above.

At that time a collision of tectonic plates caused huge sheets of sedimentary rock in what is now British Columbia to become detached and slide eastward to northeastward over their neighbors, piling up to form the southern Canadian Rockies.

[2][8][10][11] The most recent stage in the history of Mount Rundle began in the Pleistocene epoch about 2 million years ago with the sculpting and gouging of the Canadian Rockies by glaciers, and then by streams and rivers.

[11] Finally, after the glaciers retreated for the last time, a series of steep, tree-covered alluvial fans began to grow at the mouths of the deep gulches on the northeast-facing side of the mountain.

[14] Painter, print-maker and art teacher, Walter Phillips RCA[Notes 4] (1884–1963) described Mount Rundle as his, "bread and butter mountain.