Creation of the Teton Landscape: The Geologic Story of Grand Teton National Park — John Shaqi
Creation of the Teton Landscape: The Geologic Story of Grand Teton National ParkReed, John C. (John Calvin)
Science
Creation of the Teton Landscape: The Geologic Story of Grand Teton National Park
Reed, John C. (John Calvin)
Geology -- Wyoming -- Grand Teton National Park
Recent measurements show that the ice in the present Teton Glacier (fig.
6) moves nearly 30 feet per year. The ancient glaciers, which were much
wider and deeper, may have moved as much as several hundred feet a year,
like some of the large glaciers in Alaska.
As the glacier moves down a valley, it scours the valley bottom and
walls. The efficiency of ice in this process is greatly increased by the
presence of rock fragments which act as abrasives. The valley bottom is
plowed, quarried, and swept clean of soil and loose rocks. Fragments of
many sizes and shapes are dragged along the bottom of the moving ice and
the hard ones scratch long parallel grooves in the underlying tough
bedrock (fig. 7). Such grooves (_glacial striae_) record the direction
of ice movement.
The effectiveness of glaciers in cutting a U-shaped valley is
particularly striking in Glacier Gulch and Cascade Canyon (figs. 2 and
8).
The rock-walled amphitheater at the head of a glaciated valley is called
a _cirque_ (a good example is at the upper edge of the Teton Glacier,
fig. 6). The steep cirque walls develop by frost action and by quarrying
and abrasive action of the glacier ice where it is near its maximum
thickness. Commonly the glacier scoops out a shallow basin in the floor
of the cirque. Amphitheater Lake, Lake Solitude, Holly Lake, and many of
the other small lakes high in the Teton Range are located in such
basins.
The sharp peaks and the jagged knife-edge ridges so characteristic of
the Tetons are divides left between cirques and valleys carved by the
ancient glaciers.
Effects on Jackson Hole
Rock debris is carried toward the end of the glacier or along the
margins where it is released as the ice melts. The semicircular ridge of
rock fragments that marks the downhill margin of the glacier is called a
_terminal moraine_; that along the sides is a _lateral moraine_ (figs. 9
and 10). These are formed by the slow accumulation of material in the
same manner as that at the end of a conveyor belt. They are not built by
material pushed up ahead of the ice as if by a bulldozer. Large boulders
carried by ice are called _erratics_; many of these are scattered on the
floor of Jackson Hole and on the flanks of the surrounding mountains
(fig. 11).
[Illustration: Figure 7. _Rock surface polished and grooved by ice
on the floor of Glacier Gulch._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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