Are prairie mountains real mountains?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/06/2024 (538 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

To be a mountain, or not to be a mountain. In recent months I have been involved in two separate conversations about our prairie mountains. The gist of the discussion was whether we should consider them mountains.

Like socials, kangaroo jackets, and matrimonial squares, these mountains are almost entirely a Manitoba thing. Except for the Moose Mountains in Saskatchewan, they are rooted in Manitoba, marching north in a ragged line from the Manitoba/North Dakota border up to The Pas.

While I suspect I don’t need to list them, their names oddly cover several major groupings of animals, from reptiles (the Turtle Mountains) in the south, up through birds (the Ducks), and ending off with mammals (the Porcupines) in the north. The odd one out, of course is the Riding Mountains.

At the mention of “mountain,” I suspect that certain things come to mind — snow-capped peaks, deep clear lakes, chilly summer nights, the smell of a pine forest, and the sound of babbling streams tripping down a rocky ravine.

With the exception of snowy peaks, our mountains seem like the real deal. Heck, you could even include the snowy part. Due to the higher elevation, moisture-bearing clouds are prone to dump more rain and snow on the highlands, even when surrounding areas remain dry. Last winter is a great case in point, with the Riding and Duck Mountains the only locales in southern Manitoba that had snow all winter long.

Which brings up the one curse of living at the elevation we do. In Onanole, like many other areas on the mountain, we can expect frost in every month of the year and getting a corn crop or having tomatoes thrive can be a bit of a challenge.

Real mountains create wind, and if you visit the escarpment, you’ll know this is true here too. Called katabatic winds, cool air sloughs down the steep slope and out onto the prairies during the night. I suspect that we even have mini chinooks, explaining why towns situated below the escarpment, like McCreary, are often the hot spots in Manitoba.

And what about the wildlife? As discussed, the cool wet climate creates ideal conditions for the growth of thick coniferous forests. Species adapted to living in these boreal forests, such as Canada jays, spruce grouse, boreal chickadees, lynx, and pine marten are common in the Duck, Riding, or Porcupine Mountains, but rarely seen in the wide-open prairie.

And then there are the views. Born and raised in Basswood, south of Riding Mountain, I never really had a sense of the escarpment until our school field trip to the Gorge Creek trail in Riding Mountain. The entire class was gob-smacked when we saw the view out to McCreary!

With all these positive check marks it would seem that our prairie mountains are indeed mountains! The problem arises, though, that unlike true mountains, ours are decidedly one-sided.

Travelling from an easterly direction, the abrupt change in elevation is obvious. If you come at them from pretty much any other direction, however, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about.

Additionally, true mountains are generally formed as a direct result of shifting tectonic plates, created as volcanos from lava erupting from the broken crust, like Hawaii, or by the earth’s crust bending and folding and being thrust into the air where tectonic plates collide, like the Rocky Mountains. Either way our prairie mountains are not this.

Yet the escarpment WAS formed indirectly from mountain building processes to the west. The bedrock of the prairies is made up of sedimentary rock, either shale or limestone, laid down millions of years ago by inland seas. These rocks are flat and generally lie horizontally, like the plains around Portage.

When the Rocky Mountains were being formed through the collision of tectonic plates, it caused the sedimentary rock to uplift and tilt. Like a teeter-totter, when the western rock was pushed down, the eastern rock, on the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border, tipped up. This exposed the shale in our area, creating the escarpment.

And while they might not be “mountainy enough for the mountain club” (to quote the movie The Master of Disguise), they certainly are mountain-esque in the eyes of locals. Like highlands around the world, these uplands have provided the basics for survival for time immemorial, whether as areas for hunting, trapping, or building material from their tree-covered slopes. To say nothing of their roles as centres of recreation and spirituality.

Today, the prairie mountains form some of the crown jewels of the Provincial and National Park systems in Manitoba, and each summer they draw thousands of people taking respite in their cool, green clad slopes. Just like any good mountain.

So, are our mountains really mountains? The answer, in true Manitoba form, is “yeah, no.” And we’re sticking to it.

» Ken Kingdon lives in the heart of the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve, in Onanole. Send him a text at 204-848-5020 if you have wildlife stories to share.