Mobil Oil Canadian Tectonic Seminar.

The Plateau Mountain Ecological Reserve (although it wasn't called that in 1982) is quite a windswept place at a height of over 8000ft. We made a lunch stop here. The grass covered patterned ground in front is caused by periglacial conditions which shatter the Permian Rocky Mountain quartzite, by thawing & refreezing, into polygonal patterns. This is the crest of an anticline and the quartzite is almost flat-lying.

It may be Ecological but in fact it is home to the highest gas well in Canada - Savanna Creek-3A drilled in 1952 at 8132 ft. East of the McConnell Thrust, the zone of highly imbricated and deformed Mesozoic to Tertiary rocks around 50 km wide, forms the Foothills where the Lower Carboniferous & Devonian oil and gas fields are found.

The mountains in the background about 9 miles away to the west are in the High Rock Range, on the Alberta/British Columbia boundary, which lies above the Lewis Thrust and forms the Continental Divide. The peaks are in the 9000-10,000 ft range. Mount O'Rourke, left, Mount Pierce, centre, the highest peak right of centre is Mount Farquar with Mounts Holcroft & Scrimger to the right