page_title: Stone run
section_title: Falklands stone runs
hierarchical_section_title: Stone run / Falklands stone runs
caption_attribution_description: Stone runs on Weddell Island, Falkland Islands. Edited version of the picture published in Wikimedia Commons by Kelperwitch
context_page_description: A stone run is a rock landform resulting from the erosion of particular rock varieties caused by freezing-thawing cycles in periglacial conditions during the last Ice Age.
  The actual formation of stone runs involved five processes: weathering, solifluction, frost heaving, frost sorting, and washing. The stone runs are essentially different from moraines, rock glaciers, and rock flows or other rock phenomena involving the actual flow of rock blocks under stress that is sufficient to break down the cement or to cause crushing of the angularities and points of the boulders. By contrast, the stone run boulders are fixed quite stably, providing for safer climbing and crossing of the run.
  Stone runs are accumulations of boulders with no finer material between them. In the Falklands, they occur on slopes of between 1 and 10 degrees, and are the product of mass-movement and stone sorting during past periods of cold climate. They everywhere occur in association with poorly sorted, clay-rich solifluction deposits.
context_section_description: The Falklands stone runs are made up of hard quartzite blocks.  They are more widespread and larger on East Falkland, especially in the Wickham Heights area where the largest of them extend over 5 km in length.  Those on West Falkland and the minor islands are fewer in number and of smaller dimensions.  Darwin's "great valley of fragments", subsequently renamed Princes Street Stone Run after Edinburgh's Princes Street that was cobbled at the time, occupies a 4 km long and 400 m wide shallow valley trending east-west.  The feature is situated off the road to Port Louis, some 20 km northwest of Stanley.
  An early description of the Falklands stone runs was given in Antoine-Joseph Pernety’s account of his exploration of the islands during the 1763–64 French expedition under Louis Antoine de Bougainville, which established the Port Saint Louis settlement on East Falkland.  While crossing the neck between Baye Accaron (Berkeley Sound) and Baye Marville (Salvador Water) he described in detail two particular stone features he called ‘City Gates’ and ‘Amphitheatre’:
  Pernety's observations were continued by young Charles Darwin, who visited the Falklands in 1833 and 1834:
caption: Stone runs on Weddell Island, Falkland Islands; Circum Peak and New Year Cove from Mount Weddell.
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