Horseshoe Canyon

The approach is the point: Highway 9 crosses flat farmland with nothing to suggest a change, and then the ground simply opens into a horseshoe-shaped canyon about a hundred metres deep and several kilometres across, banded in grey, ochre and rust. The layers are Cretaceous, laid down when this was coastal swamp, and they hold coal seams, petrified wood and fossils; the rock is the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, named here. Trails descend from the rim into the canyon floor, steep and loose at the top. The badlands exist because glacial meltwater cut through the prairie soil and the soft rock has eroded since.

What you actually see

• The sudden rim - flat farmland ending abruptly at a canyon edge.
• The banded layers - Cretaceous rock in grey, ochre and rust with coal seams.
• The floor trails - steep descents into the canyon bottom.
• The petrified wood - fossil wood visible in the exposed layers.

When to go

May to October; low sun in early morning and evening brings out the banding. Summer heat on the floor is severe with no shade. Rain turns the clay to a slick paste.

Honest expectations

The descent is steep and loose, and the clay becomes dangerously slippery when wet. There is no shade or water below the rim. Removing fossils or petrified wood is illegal in Alberta.

Nearby

Drumheller lies northeast; the hoodoos are beyond it.