Sixteen thousand tonnes of quartzite the ice carried 400 kilometres and left on the prairie
A block of quartzite sitting alone on open prairie, 41 metres by 18 and 9 metres high, weighing about 16,500 tonnes. It did not come from here. Between 12,000 and 17,000 years ago a landslide in the Athabasca valley dropped this rock onto a valley glacier, which carried it east into the Laurentide ice sheet, which carried it south and set it down when the ice went. It is the largest piece of the Foothills Erratics Train, a line of the same quartzite running 930 kilometres along the mountain front into northern Montana. The Blackfoot used it as the landmark for the crossing of the Sheep River, and the town’s name is their word for rock. A Napi story explains the split. Park at the turnoff and walk up; the fence and the signs are there because people climb it and should not.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
