6 December 2013

Friday fold: Turtle Mountain and the Frank Slide

Posted by Callan Bentley

Turtle Mountain is a mountain in the Canadian Rockies that had a terrible landslide occur, half-burying the coal-mining town of Frank.

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The mountain’s structure is an eastward-verging anticline, floored by a fault, like just about everything in the Front Ranges of the Canadian Rockies. Here’s a model made of felt in the Frank Slide Visitor Center:

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The black layer represents the coal that the town was founded to extract. Miners trapped underground by the slide miraculously survived and tunneled their way out again!

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It’s an awesome place to contemplate the relationship between ancient tectonics and modern risks. I’ll be taking students back to Frank in July. I’m looking forward to it.