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Wednesday 27 July 2011

Another roche moutonnee



Still in the Stockholm Archipelago, I did a long paddle in the kayak today (25 kms) around the whole of the island of Blido, and was reminded yet again just how many ice streamlined forms there are.  There must be thousands of roche moutonnees in the whole archipelago, of many sizes from miniature to much larger than the one shown here.  Not much doubt about the ice direction here -- it was streaming pretty well exactly from the north towards the south, as shown by gouges,  striations, whalebacks and those ubiquitous roche moutonnee forms......

Sorry about the dim light -- I passed this particular feature at 5.30 in the morning!

2 comments:

Constantinos Ragazas said...

Brian,

The 'roche mountonnee' in your photo clearly shows one end being smooth and streamlined (the right end looking at the photo) while the other end being a sharp drop-off cliff with broken boulders. I assume this is typical.

What's the mechanism of glacier ice flow that accounts for this? Is this due to weather erosion over time following the cracks in the rock? But then, where are the missing parts?

A puzzlement I had for some time.

Kostas

BRIAN JOHN said...

Kostas as usual, please look at previous posts. It's all there, on the site already...