Looking Back: Tales of the Turtle

June of 1955: “Will Turtle speak again; or wreak havoc and destruction on the homes of Frank as it did 52 years ago..."

In June of 1955 Vern Decoux, ace reporter and photographer for the Crowsnest Pass Bureau of the Lethbridge Herald, asked the following question.  (Take a deep breath before you read this long sentence),  “Will Turtle speak again; or wreak havoc and destruction on the homes of Frank as it did 52 years ago, or are the consistent puffs of white steam or dust emerging from cracks in the uppermost heights of the limestone mountain just a phenomenon."  

You could always count on Vern to do more than just relate, matter of factly, what was happening in the Pass. He could sure weave a story, that man. In this particular case he wrote several reports, through a series of days, in the Herald about the huffing, puffing and audible rumblings of Turtle Mountain; monkey business that had put residents on edge back then.  He dug out facts, took pictures and gathered observations from those around the mountain about what they saw and felt because that’s what a good reporter does.  It was, as he related that week in early June, an ominous sight that at times resembled a volcano.  Some Hillcrest residents noted back then that rocks had been falling off the mountain “for the last two weeks near where the old Man Rock used to be”.  Many will remember the Man Rock as a pinnacle of stone resembling a man high atop the mountain. Well perhaps not many when you consider that it was 70 years ago! 

In 1954, lightning, ever present on Turtle’s fractured top, knocked that edifice off the mountain. Those same residents told Vern that the latest activity had formed yet another Man Rock.  Much wringing of hands and investigating went on about Turtle but finally the old girl settled down after three days of rumblings. The aftermath revealed some new expanded larger cracks on the south side of her crown.  There was much contemplation as to what was going on and why the dust/steam/smoke was happening.  One thing known for sure and that is there are huge cracks atop Turtle that fill with snow which eventually melts into those cracks.  Whatever the cause was, it was the talk of the town. 

As an aside, in later years, it was that omnipresent lightning that finally caused the Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) to throw up their hands at the damage it consistently caused to their monitoring systems. This included some pretty sophisticated equipment like thermistors (temperature), geophones (tremors), tilt meters, crack meters and extensometers.  There was even a series of mounted prisms on the mountain that were used to periodically measure distances from a station (steel post) down near the Hillcrest Bridge. An EDM (modern survey instrument) was used and can measure very accurately the distances to those prisms and thus monitor movement.  There was so much for the lightning to choose from. 

 All this monitoring equipment was all replaced by one single apparatus whose name is a mouthful.  It  was called ground-based interferometric aperture radar (GB-InSAR). It acquired images using radar antennae that travel back and forth on a fixed rail.  It constantly transmitted radar waves at the south peak area and could ultimately measure any change within a few millimeters. This device was replaced in 2017 by an even more sophisticated apparatus called LiSAmobile, which scans the mountain surface every eight minutes and detects changes. “The data collected is crucial for understanding the mountain’s behavior and potential hazards.”

If that movement exceeds a threshold the AGS is notified. The LiSAmobile monitor is located in the dog park area behind the Bellevue Cemetery. It is mounted on an unremarkable looking little blue building(pump house) and provides an incredibly accurate picture of Turtle’s face.  AGS also periodically flies over Turtle using something called LiDAR which gathers millions of data points accurately using GPS. I am thinking maybe this process helps to check the big cracks on the backside of Turtle?

Returning to 1955, it was somewhat ironical that three months after Turtle spoke up, on the Labour Day Monday evening in September, a giant fire was visible at the very top of Turtle. On this occasion the pyre had been deliberately set to celebrate the 50 year Jubilee celebration by the Province of Alberta.  This conflagration was created by a crew of men, headed by Fire Chief Tom Gibos, who, with his team, hauled eight rubber tires and 120 red, green and yellow flares to the top of the mountain.  There were three reported phone calls to the municipal office from Lethbridge residents that night that claimed to be able to see this fiery beacon clearly.  Imagine packing eight tires up that mountain.! What madness. But wait. It just occurred to me. Can you imagine having to come down off Turtle at night? More madness. 

While there have been hundreds of trips made up to the top of Turtle and thousands of photographs taken from its summit, there is one that stands out in my mind that is breath taking. That picture, staged in the early 1950’s, is of a man by the name of Bill Petrunik.  In the shot Bill, a former Colemanite and an accomplished gymnast at the time, is depicted shirtless, doing a handstand on the very highest tip of the mountain.  It is very clear that his position was at the very edge with nothing but sky behind him. I was able to orientate where he was hand standing by studying the background in the photo. You can see Bellevue in the distance and the Hillcrest Cemetery by his head. My stomach flips every time I look at that picture.

I got to know Bill a few years ago and he passed in 2023 at the age of 92.  He was a remarkable man who, in his teen years, finished high school and worked at the same time. He told me he used to make his bucket, head for school from Bushtown and at 2:30 in the afternoon, then walk up the Miners Path to the McGillivray Mine to work the afternoon shift. He did this for two years. I walked with him up the path in 2021, when he was 90, where he reminisced about what it was like to come and go from work, along with dozens of other miners.