A Playground for Titans? by Elizabeth Clements

When you climb the knoll at Red Rock Coulee and get your first full view of the surreal valley below, you can’t help but think you’ve landed on Mars or some other sci-fi world. There’s nothing like it anywhere in Alberta. Can you imagine Thor and Wonder Woman engaged in a playful game of “curling” here on a sunny summer’s day? Their powerful hurls could send these spherical-shaped concretions spinning downhill all the way to the distant Sweet Grass Hills of Montana.

I love this quote: “They look like giant, petrified cow patties, strewn across the grasslands in vivid shades of rust and speckled with gnarly bits of multi-coloured lichen. The ones that rest on exposed patches of shale look more like ancient curling rocks used by a mutant race, or maybe extraterrestrial spacecraft that once transported aliens to Earth.”

But beware. These rounded rocks that resemble curling rocks because of their flattened tops and bottoms, minus a handle, can be deceptive when sunshine turns to rain. Hope Johnson, a well-known authority on flora and fauna in the area, advised in her book “that the bedrock of this area is very bentonitic, which means that it is extremely treacherous when wet,” Johnson points out. “If rain threatens, get out fast, and do not visit this area in thawing conditions, nor shortly after any amount of rain.” One experienced traveler, familiar with prairie terrain once the home of dinosaurs, commented “that mudstones made of bentonite turn into a slippery, greenish “dinosaur snot” when wet.” Now that’s quite an image.

Once you get over your amazement at the stunning array of these “sandstone spheroids, they are actually called concretions and were formed in prehistoric seas as layers of sand, calcite and iron oxide collected around a dead organism such as shells, leaves or bones. They grew as the circulating waters deposited more layers, and are harder and more resistant to erosional forces than everything around them, but they aren’t indestructible.”

As the glaciers retreated, some of these boulders were crushed while others remained intact, scattered over a very small area. “Swirling water added more deposits, which stuck to the formations and made them larger, like layers on an onion. The resulting boulders became harder than the surrounding material, so when erosion carved the coulee, the softer material washed away, leaving the red rocks exposed.

Some of the rocks have split open so cleanly you’d think it was done with a laser, not by nature. The shades vary from of deep orange to red, depending on their age and exposure to the environment and the color goes straight through the rock, caused by iron oxide that is part of the rock’s formation. Some broken rocks may even show faint lines or bands, just like trees do, and if you’re lucky, you may see the shape of a fossil or imprint of a fern.

Here’s another beautiful quote: “Artist/photographer Ken Delgarno notes in Badlands: A Geography of Metaphors, Red Rock’s concretions are especially striking because they’re out of whack with the surrounding grasslands, bentonite clay and grass-flecked hills. Seen at dusk or dawn, “the concretions appear like a discovery of strangers, wandering souls, exiled here from another world,” he writes. Delgarno believes the captivating concretions resemble “large dinosaur eggs or alien pods in various states of decay.”

“Concretions could surely stand in for inkblots for Rorschach tests.”

Alberta Parks has designated this Crown land as a natural area. Although there are no gates to close the park, technically, the park is only open from May to September when dry weather conditions are most ideal. The road is not plowed in the winter. There’s a simple sign marking the site, the parking area is small, and there are no amenities available other than a picnic table from which to enjoy the scenic array of boulders scattered over roughly 800 square miles of rumpled, treeless, wind-blown prairie coulees in the south-south-west corner of Alberta—approximately a 30-mile drive from Medicine Hat.

Despite the sometimes harsh climate, wildlife slithers, scampers, leaps and crawls, lopes or soars among these formations while delicate wildflowers dance along the coulee’s crevices, carved by eons of melting ice and spring rains. Cracked or still intact, some of these massive boulders can measure up to 2.5 metres across and can easily seat several people side-by-side. And with time, these concretions just keep growing bigger.

All photographs are taken by Nick Clements Photography

Summertime is perfect for day trips. Bring a snack (for yourself, not the wildlife), a pair of sturdy shoes for hiking, possibly a stick in case you encounter one of those slithering things, and most of all, bring your camera. It’s one of the rare “free” things in life.