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Monday 15 August 2022

Rhonegletscher -- polished rock

 



Prof Simon Cook publishes some superb images on his Twitter page.  Here are two stunning images of polished and striated bedrock close to the Rhone Gletscher in Switzerland.  Classic small whaleback forms, with roches moutonnee fracturing on the down-glacier flanks of some of them.

2 comments:

Dave Maynard said...

Which way was the ice travelling? Left to right on the lower image?

Dave

BRIAN JOHN said...

On the top photo it's difficult to tell the direction of ice movement -- different rules apply on steep valley sides. But on the bottom photo, yes, the ice moved from left to right. Generally the up-glacier side of undulations is where abrasion and smoothing is concentrated, and on the down-glacier side you get fracturing and plucking. That's where entrainment of large plucked blocks almost always happens.