Tombstone Mountains Fall Colours Backpacking > Wilderness Area
Tombstone Territorial Park
The Tombstone Mountains are in fact a distinct range within the Southern Ogilvie Mountains. They are famous for their stunning topography, jagged ridges and immense vertical faces of imposing rock, some more than 2000 feet high: hence the name “Tombstones”. Its geological history is quite interesting. The Tombstones were not thrust up from the earth due to plate tectonics, as many mountains are, but rather the story of the Tombstones is a darker affair, having its beginning deep in the earth’s crust. Here hot molten-lava surged into cracks in the earth’s crust and then slowly cooled, creating a fine-grained and quite hard rock known as syenite. As time passed the softer sedimentary rock in which the Tombstones cooled, the “overburden” as it’s called, eroded away to slowly reveal the Tombstones, which due to their hardness were better able to resist erosion.
The Tombstone Mountains are situated
right at the edge of Beringia, a zone of Alaska and the Yukon that
remained ice-free during the periods of glaciation. This ice-free
zone was caused by the rain-shadow effect of the tall Costal Mountains
of the pacific-northwest. The Tombstones, however, did not escape
the ice. The immense sheets of ice scoured the land creating
u-shaped valley bottoms and such distinct features as arêtes: thin
razor-like ridges formed by the erosive force of parallel valley
glaciers.
Dempster Highway
Modern-day access to the park was made possible by the construction of the Dempster Highway, which was begun in 1959 but not fully completed until 1979. The highway is named after Inspector William Dempster of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, who headed the search for the infamous Lost Patrol. The Dempster Highway is Canada’s northernmost highway, stretching 671 km (417 miles) to the town of Inuvik, Northwest Territories. It is an engineering triumph. Designers had to pioneer new techniques for building on permafrost, such as laying down a gravel pad 1.5- -2.5m (4-8 feet ) in thickness to insulate the permafrost below from the heat of the short, but sometimes intense, summer. Without this thick layer of insulating gravel the highway would literally sink into the ground. The highway is famous for its stunning fall colours, unsurpassed wilderness, and amazing opportunities to view wildlife.
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