MARCUS LANDSLIDE TRAIL
MARCUS LANDSLIDE TRAIL Marcus Landslide Trail Scottsdale's McDowell Sonoran Preserve is home to dozens of impressive geological features. While many, like Tom's Thumb, and Brown's Mountain, are impossible to miss, the one that eclipses them all takes a trained eye to locate and appreciate. Granite boulders along the trail If you didn't know it was there, you'd probably never even notice the massive rockfall area called Marcus Landslide. Discovered in 2002 by a pair of local geologists, the nearly mile-long wreckage is comprised of an estimated 25.8 billion pounds of rubble. Mushroom rock The slide occurred during the Pleistocene Ice Age about a half-million years ago when a colder, wetter climate may have instigated the slide which shaved 1,200 feet off the ridge line releasing energy equivalent to an atomic bomb blast. The trail, which is named for former Arizona State University geography professor Melvin Marcus, loops among the slide's components giving a co...