And today as we hike and scramble across The Devils Causeway with 300 foot drops on either side of a very narrow path over boulders, we realize that this is such a formation. Then you notice two cirques pressing together forming a narrow ridge between them. We look up at the massive Chinese Wall to now understand that this is a large cirque. The force of the ice on the upside of the glacier creates a rounded cliff.

It is forming what can be seen today at Gardner Creek along Forest Service Road 900 from Yampa, Colorado leading to Stillwater Reservoir. On the trailing end of the melting ice, gravity forces the deposit of rock in a heap called a terminal moraine. You are witnessing the formation of what we know today as the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. Then put time on fast forward to witness the scraping and carving of glacial ice on that same landscape. Magma and steam from fissures in the earth are spewing and forming an erosion resistant crust of basalt rock on the surface of the earth for as far as you can see. You are in a basin that is full of volcanic activity. Take yourself back to a time before the last Ice Age.

Flat tops wilderness