Canadian geologist Bill Mathews proposed in 1951 that The Table formed when magma intruded into and melted a vertical tube in the overlying Cordilleran Ice Sheet. The partially molten mass of hornblende-phyric andesite cooled as a large block, with gravity flattening its upper surface. Horizontal columns occur at numerous locations along the periphery of the mass. The absence of glacial erosion of the tuya suggests that it erupted during the early Holocene, just prior to the disappearance of the ice sheet. Similar formations can be found in the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field, the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province and elsewhere in the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt.