Big Rock-henge

England has Stonehenge, New York has Manhattanhenge and Alberta has 'Big Rock-henge' :) This monstrous block of Rocky Mountain quartzite is known... more

by James Anderson

Title

Big Rock-henge

Artist

James Anderson

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photography

Description

England has Stonehenge, New York has Manhattanhenge and Alberta has 'Big Rock-henge' :) This monstrous block of Rocky Mountain quartzite is known as a 'glacial erratic', but locally it is known as 'Big Rock'. Big Rock weighs 16,500 tonnes and measures at about 41 x 18 x 9 meters and the erratic is one of the largest glacial erratic's in North America.

"Big Rock" was deposited during the retreat of the Cordilleran ice sheet at the end of the Late Pleistocene to early Holocene periods. The massive quartzite rock came from an area close to Mount Edith Cavell, in Jasper National Park (see my image below). A rockslide some 30,000 years ago resulted in the large rock falling on the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. The rock was carried by the glacier some 400 kms to this location approximately 10,000 years ago and unceremoniously dropped off when the ice sheet began to retreat. The site marks the eastern-most extent of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet and is a component of the Foothills Erratic's Train, a long line of unusual rocks stretching 580 kilometers from beyond the McLeod River north and west of Jasper National Park south into northern Montana. There is a lens flare on the center left sun beam that sort of looks like a star with a ring around it, I kind of think it fits the theme of the image :) Okotoks, Alberta, Canada

Uploaded

June 8th, 2015