Turtle Mountain (Alberta)

Last updated
Turtle Mountain
Frank Slide - Turtle Mountain.JPG
Turtle Mountain.
Highest point
Elevation 2,210 m (7,250 ft) [1]
Prominence 518 m (1,699 ft) [1]
Coordinates 49°34′37″N114°24′44″W / 49.57694°N 114.41222°W / 49.57694; -114.41222
Geography
Location Alberta, Canada
Parent range Blairmore Range
Topo map NTS 82G9 Blairmore
Geology
Mountain type Limestone
Climbing
Easiest route Scramble

Turtle Mountain is a mountain in Alberta, Canada.

It is located in the Crowsnest River Valley and is part of the Blairmore Range of the Canadian Rockies. The headwaters of the Oldman River are found here.

Contents

History

Local Indigenous peoples of the area, the Blackfoot and Ktunaxa, have oral traditions referring to the peak as "the mountain that moves." [2]

The chemist B. D. Porritt was born in the area in 1884.

The mountain is most famous for the 1903 Frank Slide in which 30 million cubic metres (82 million tonnes) of limestone broke away from the top of the mountain, burying the East half of the town of Frank and killing about 70 to over 90 of the approximate 600 residents of the town. [3] However, only 12 bodies were ever recovered. [4] The mountain has been monitored since 1903 with the most recent project established in 2003. [5]

Geology

Turtle Mountain is an anticline of Paleozoic Rundle Group carbonates thrust over weaker Mesozoic clastics and coals. Summit fissures at the apex of the anticline likely allowed water to infiltrate and weaken the slightly-soluble carbonates within the mountain face, while the supporting underlying clastics were undermined by valley glaciation followed by erosion from the Crowsnest River.

Turtle Mountain Monitoring Project & Field Laboratory

On April 29, 2003, at the ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Frank Slide, the Hon. Ralph Klein, Premier of Alberta, announced $1.1 million in funding for a monitoring program on Turtle Mountain.

Implementing the project required a collaborative effort between contractors, the Government of Alberta and universities. Initial stages of the state-of-the-art predictive monitoring system were designed and deployed by March 31, 2005. The Turtle Mountain Monitoring Project was administered by Emergency Management Alberta (EMA), with technical direction from the Energy Resources Conservation Board/Alberta Geological Survey (ERCB/AGS).

As of April 2, 2005, ERCB/AGS assumed responsibility for the long-term operation, maintenance and upgrading of the mountain-monitoring system, as well as facilitating research using the system. Since taking over the project, AGS has reviewed the near–real-time data stream from the sensor network installed on the south peak of Turtle Mountain. The data show corresponding trends between temperature and the slow, long-term creep of South Peak. The present project updates and modernizes some of the components of the more recent monitoring programs, as well as adding newer, more high-tech systems.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crowsnest Pass</span> Mountain pass in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada

Crowsnest Pass is a low mountain pass across the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies on the Alberta–British Columbia border.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crowsnest Pass, Alberta</span> Specialized municipality in Alberta, Canada

The Municipality of Crowsnest Pass is a specialized municipality in southwest Alberta, Canada. Within the Rocky Mountains adjacent to the eponymous Crowsnest Pass, the municipality formed as a result of the 1979 amalgamation of five municipalities – the Village of Bellevue, the Town of Blairmore, the Town of Coleman, the Village of Frank, and Improvement District No. 5, which included the Hamlet of Hillcrest and numerous other unincorporated communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount John Laurie</span> Mountain in Alberta, Canada

Mount John Laurie is a mountain in the Canadian Rockies, in Alberta's Municipal District of Bighorn No. 8.

Frank is an urban community in the Rocky Mountains within the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass in southwest Alberta, Canada. It was formerly incorporated as a village prior to 1979 when it amalgamated with four other municipalities to form Crowsnest Pass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alberta Highway 3</span> Highway in Alberta, Canada

Alberta Provincial Highway No. 3, commonly referred to as Highway 3 and officially named the Crowsnest Highway, is a 324-kilometre (201 mi) highway that traverses southern Alberta, Canada, running from the Crowsnest Pass through Lethbridge to the Trans-Canada Highway in Medicine Hat. Together with British Columbia Highway 3 which begins in Hope, it forms an interprovincial route that serves as an alternate to the Trans-Canada from the Lower Mainland to the Canadian Prairies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Purcell Mountains</span> Mountain range in British Columbia, Canada

The Purcell Mountains are a mountain range in southeastern British Columbia, Canada. They are a subrange of the Columbia Mountains, which includes the Selkirk, Monashee, and Cariboo Mountains. They are located on the west side of the Rocky Mountain Trench in the area of the Columbia Valley, and on the east side of the valley of Kootenay Lake and the Duncan River. The only large settlements in the mountains are the Panorama Ski Resort and Kicking Horse Resort, adjacent to the Columbia Valley towns of Invermere and Golden, though there are small settlements, such as Yahk and Moyie along the Crowsnest Highway, and residential rural areas dependent on the cities of Creston, Kimberley and Cranbrook, which are located adjacent to the range.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crowsnest River</span>

The Crowsnest River is a tributary to the Oldman River in southwestern Alberta, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Slide</span> Rockslide, buried part of Frank, Canada (1903)

The Frank Slide was a massive rockslide that buried part of the mining town of Frank in the District of Alberta of the North-West Territories, Canada, at 4:10 a.m. on April 29, 1903. Around 44 million cubic metres/110 million tonnes of limestone rock slid down Turtle Mountain. Witnesses reported that within 100 seconds the rock reached up the opposing hills, obliterating the eastern edge of Frank, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) line and the coal mine. It was one of the largest landslides in Canadian history and remains the deadliest, as between 70 and 90 of the town's residents died, most of whom remain buried in the rubble. Multiple factors led to the slide: Turtle Mountain's formation left it in a constant state of instability. Coal mining operations may have weakened the mountain's internal structure, as did a wet winter and cold snap on the night of the disaster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin</span> Sedimentary basin of Canada

The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) underlies 1.4 million square kilometres (540,000 sq mi) of Western Canada including southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. This vast sedimentary basin consists of a massive wedge of sedimentary rock extending from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Canadian Shield in the east. This wedge is about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) thick under the Rocky Mountains, but thins to zero at its eastern margins. The WCSB contains one of the world's largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas and supplies much of the North American market, producing more than 450 million cubic metres per day of gas in 2000. It also has huge reserves of coal. Of the provinces and territories within the WCSB, Alberta has most of the oil and gas reserves and almost all of the oil sands.

British Columbia Highway 3, officially named the Crowsnest Highway, is an 841-kilometre (523 mi) highway that traverses southern British Columbia, Canada. It runs from the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 1) at Hope to Crowsnest Pass at the Alberta border and forms the western portion of the interprovincial Crowsnest Highway that runs from Hope to Medicine Hat, Alberta. The highway is considered a Core Route of the National Highway System.

The Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) was an independent, quasi-judicial agency of the Government of Alberta. It regulated the safe, responsible, and efficient development of Alberta's energy resources: oil, natural gas, oil sands, coal, and pipelines. Led by eight Board members, the ERCB's team of engineers, geologists, technicians, economists, and other professionals served Albertans from thirteen locations across the province.

The Birch Mountains kimberlite field is a cluster of kimberlitic volcanic pipes or diatremes in north-central Alberta, Canada that were emplaced during a period of kimberlitic volcanism in the Late Cretaceous epoch. As of 2011, 8 diatremes had been discovered in the field, and diamonds and microdiamononds had been recovered during sampling programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oil reserves in Canada</span>

Oil reserves in Canada were estimated at 172 billion barrels as of the start of 2015 . This figure includes the oil sands reserves that are estimated by government regulators to be economically producible at current prices using current technology. According to this figure, Canada's reserves are third only to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Over 95% of these reserves are in the oil sands deposits in the province of Alberta. Alberta contains nearly all of Canada's oil sands and much of its conventional oil reserves. The balance is concentrated in several other provinces and territories. Saskatchewan and offshore areas of Newfoundland in particular have substantial oil production and reserves. Alberta has 39% of Canada's remaining conventional oil reserves, offshore Newfoundland 28% and Saskatchewan 27%, but if oil sands are included, Alberta's share is over 98%.

The Alberta Group is a stratigraphical unit of Cenomanian to early Campanian age in the Lewis overthrust in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elk Point Group</span>

The Elk Point Group is a stratigraphic unit of Early to Middle Devonian age in the Western Canada and Williston sedimentary basins. It underlies a large area that extends from the southern boundary of the Northwest Territories in Canada to North Dakota in the United States. It has been subdivided into numerous formations, number of which host major petroleum and natural gas reservoirs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lille, Alberta</span> Former village in Alberta, Canada

Lille is a ghost town and former village in the Crowsnest Pass area of southwest Alberta, Canada. It was a company-built coal mining community that, between 1901 and 1912, hosted a population that grew to over 400. The mines at Lille closed in 1912, due primarily to weak coal prices, increasing production costs, and the increasingly poor quality of the coal. The community was then dismantled and most of its structures were moved elsewhere. Today the site is an Alberta Provincial Historic Resource and is known for the elegant ruins of a set of Bernard-style coke ovens that was imported from Belgium.

The geology of North Dakota includes thick sequences oil and coal bearing sedimentary rocks formed in shallow seas in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, as well as terrestrial deposits from the Cenozoic on top of ancient Precambrian crystalline basement rocks. The state has extensive oil and gas, sand and gravel, coal, groundwater and other natural resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Tecumseh (Alberta)</span>

Mount Tecumseh is a 2,547-metre-high (8,356 ft) mountain summit located in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sentry Mountain</span> Mountain in the country of Canada

Sentry Mountain is a 2,435-metre (7,989-foot) summit located in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Parrish</span> Mountain in the country of Canada

Mount Parrish is a 2,530-metre (8,301-foot) mountain summit located in Alberta, Canada.

References

  1. 1 2 "Turtle Mountain". Bivouac.com. Retrieved Aug 5, 2007.
  2. The Frank Slide Story, Frank Slide Interpretive Centre
  3. Frank Slide Interpretive Centre
  4. SOS! Canadian Disasters
  5. Turtle Mountain Monitoring Project