Ten columns held up by caps of sandstone that are 40 per cent cement
The badlands are full of hoodoos and these are the ones everybody photographs: about ten stone columns standing between roughly one and three metres, sixteen kilometres east of Drumheller on Highway 10. The structure is simple and the reason they exist is the cap. Dark brown marine shale of the Bearpaw Formation erodes fast; the white sandstone caprock sitting on top of each column does not, because it is nearly 40 per cent calcite cement, so the pillar under the cap survives while the ground around it washes away. When the cap finally goes, the hoodoo goes with it. Alberta made them a Provincial Historic Resource on 25 January 2001, which means the Historical Resources Act protects them and climbing on them is not allowed: they are soft rock and a boot takes off what took centuries to stand up. Walk the boardwalk, photograph them, leave them where they are.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
