The Ross Pass fault zone (RPFZ) in the central Bridger Range marks the boundary between Proterozoic Belt Supergroup rocks to the north and Archean metamorphic rocks to the south, and may represent the overlap of two Laramide styles of deformation: thin-skinned fold and thrust deformation to the north and basement-involved foreland deformation to the south.

The fault zone consists of three northwest-trending, northeast-dipping, oblique-slip thrust faults with varying amounts of displacement. The middle thrust, the Pass fault, is the most extensive within the zone; to the west, the Proterozoic LaHood Formation is faulted against Archean quartzo-feldspathic gneisses and amphibolites and overlying Middle and Upper Cambrian strata. Displacement decreases eastward as the fault offsets the lower Paleozoic section and dies out within the upper Paleozoic strata. This variation in displacement is caused by folding within the hanging wall strata along the fault plane during thrusting. The folded strata are again offset by another smaller thrust to the northeast, the Peak fault, which may have originated as an out-of-the-syncline thrust. The Dry Fo k fault, southwest of the Pass fault, is largely an intraformational thrust within the Middle Cambrian Meagher Limestone which formed in response to buttressing against the Archean foreland block to the south.

South of the RPFZ, both the Archean and the overlying Phanerozoic strata have been deformed into a large asymmetric, steeply dipping, eastward verging fold typical of basement-involved foreland structures.

The structural relationships along the RPFZ developed as the southeast margin of the Montana salient of the Cordilleran fold and thrust belt impinged on the northern margin of the Laramide foreland province. The relatively small displacement within the thrusts indicates that the RPFZ is within or near the leading edge of the Montana salient. The RPFZ may be an extension of the inferred ancestral Willow Creek fault zone to the west, which was the southern margin of the Proterozoic Belt basin. Laramide compressional stresses exploited this long active zone of weakness and resulted in the impingement of fold and thrust structures upon a foreland uplift.

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