Mount John Laurie is a

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...

in the

Canadian Rockies The Canadian Rockies () or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost part of the Canadian Cordillera, w ...

, in

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

Municipal District of Bighorn No. 8 The Municipal District of Bighorn No. 8 is a municipal district (MD) situated in Census Division No. 15 of Alberta, Canada. It is located between Calgary and Banff National Park, north of Kananaskis Improvement District. Highway 1 (the Trans-C ...

Various names

Officially named Mount John Laurie in 1961, it is also known as Mount Laurie, or by its original Stoney Nakoda name ''Îyâmnathka'', borrowed into English as Mount Yamnuska or simply Yamnuska. is a

compound Compound may refer to: Architecture and built environments * Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall ** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struc ...

that includes root words meaning "mountain" and "flat", however it is usually translated more figuratively as "flat-faced mountain". John Lee Laurie, 1899–1959, was a founder of the

Indian Association of Alberta The Indian Association of Alberta is a province-wide First Nations rights organization. It was founded by John Callihoo and John Laurie in 1939, after splitting off from the League of Indians in Western Canada. Origins and expansion Before 1946 ...

. The mountain's 1961 renaming came at the request of the Stoney Nakoda First Nation. Laurie, an educator and political activist, served as secretary of the Indian Association of Alberta from 1944 to 1956, promoting the causes of First Nations in Alberta.

Peak and climbing

Standing at approximately above sea level, Mount John Laurie is the last mountain on the north side of the

Bow River The headwaters of the Bow River in Alberta, Canada, start at the Bow Glacier and Bow Lake (Alberta), Bow Lake in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, Canadian Rocky Mountains. The glacial stream that feeds Bow Lake (Alberta), Bow Lake ...

valley (

Bow Valley Bow Valley is a valley along the upper Bow River in Alberta, Canada. The name "Bow" refers to the reeds that grew along its banks and which were used by the local First Nations in Canada, First Nations people to make bows; the Blackfoot langu ...

) as it exits the mountains for the foothills and prairie of Alberta. Located close to

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

, it is a popular "great scramble". It is also a popular

rock climbing Rock climbing is a climbing sports discipline that involves ascending climbing routes, routes consisting of natural rock in an outdoor environment, or on artificial resin climbing walls in a mostly indoor environment. Routes are documented in c ...

destination, with over 100 routes of all difficulty levels spread out across its face.

Geology

Mount John Laurie is the result of the McConnell Thrust Fault, which put the resistive, cliff-forming

Cambrian The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...

carbonate rock Carbonate rocks are a class of sedimentary rocks composed primarily of carbonate minerals. The two major types are limestone, which is composed of calcite or aragonite (different crystal forms of CaCO3), and Dolomite (rock), dolomite rock (also kn ...

of the

Eldon Formation The Eldon Formation is a stratigraphic unit that is present on the western edge of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in the southern Canadian Rockies of southwestern Alberta and southeastern British Columbia ...

on top of the much younger and weaker

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

aged,

clastic Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks by ...

Belly River Formation The Belly River Group is a stratigraphic unit of Late Cretaceous age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It takes the name from the Belly River, a tributary of the Oldman River in southern Alberta, and was first described in outcrop on t ...

McMechan, M.E., 1995, Geology, Rocky Mountain Foothills and Front Ranges in Kananaskis Country, Alberta. Geological Survey of Canada. Map 1865A, scale 1:100 000. The fault, which sits at the base of the cliff face, represents an age difference of around 450 million years.

Spirituality

In 1987 Mount John Laurie was listed into a global network of natural spiritual places, which also included

Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano located on the Japanese island of Honshu, with a summit elevation of . It is the highest mountain in Japan, the second-highest volcano on any Asian island (after Mount Kerinci on the Indonesian island of Sumatra), a ...

in Japan,

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric Megalith, megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, to ...

Mount Shasta Mount Shasta ( ; Shasta people, Shasta: ''Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki''; Karuk language, Karuk: ''Úytaahkoo'') is a Volcano#Volcanic activity, potentially active stratovolcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. A ...

Machu Picchu Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru on a mountain ridge at . Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is the most familiar icon of the Inca Empire. It is located in the ...

in Peru, Australia's

Uluru Uluru (; ), also known as Ayers Rock ( ) and officially gazetted as UluruAyers Rock, is a large sandstone monolith. It outcrop, crops out near the centre of Australia in the southern part of the Northern Territory, south-west of Alice Spri ...

, and the pyramids of the Yucatán.archive.is
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:John Laurie Two-thousanders of Alberta Alberta's Rockies Front Ranges