Our landscape carries the legacy of ice age glaciers. Glaciers carved sharp mountain peaks, steep U-shaped valleys, and fiords. Glaciers also left thick blankets of sediment in our lowlands and valleys that include gravel used for construction and sand that forms our beaches. Soils developed on these sediment blankets support our forests and farms.

Some mountain peaks, such as Mt. Arrowsmith, protruded above the ice as Nunataks, but most of the bedrock, even Mount Benson, was completely covered and smoothed as ice moved over it. Smoothed rock is extensive on the lower slopes of valleys.