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The resulting erosional landforms include striations, cirques, glacial horns, arêtes, trim lines, U-shaped valleys, roches moutonnées, overdeepenings and hanging valleys. Striations: grooves and indentations in rock outcrops, formed by the scraping of small sediments on the bottom of a glacier across the Earth's surface. The direction of ...
A hanging glacier on Mount Shuksan. A hanging glacier originates high on the wall of a glacial valley and descends only part of the way to the surface of the main glacier and abruptly stops, typically at a cliff. [1] Avalanching and icefalls are the mechanisms for ice and snow transfer to the valley floor below. [1]
Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite National Park flowing from a hanging valley Hanging valley, Ibar (lake) valley, Rila Mountain, Bulgaria. A hanging valley is a tributary valley that is higher than the main valley. They are most commonly associated with U-shaped valleys, where a tributary glacier flows into a glacier of larger volume.
A hanging glacier appears in a hanging valley, and has the potential to break off from the side of the mountain it is attached to. [12] [20] As bits and pieces of hanging glaciers break off and begin to fall, avalanches can be triggered. [20] Examples include: Eiger Glacier, Switzerland; Angel Glacier, Canada
A valley glacier cannot avoid the interlocking spurs as a river can. As the valley glacier moves, abrasion and plucking erode the protruding tips of the spurs, leaving steep cliff-like truncated spurs. Hanging valleys are found in between truncated spurs as they join the main glacial valley from the side. It is common for waterfalls to form ...
Surrounding smaller tributary valleys will often join the main valleys during glaciation periods, leaving behind features known as hanging valleys high in the trough walls after the ice melts. After deglaciation, snow and ice melt from the mountain tops can create streams and rivers in U-shaped valleys. These are referred to as misfit streams.
Therefore, when glaciers recede, the valleys of the tributary glaciers remain above the main glacier's depression and are called hanging valleys. At the start of a classic valley glacier is a bowl-shaped cirque, which have escarped walls on three sides but is open on the side that descends into the valley.
The glaciers that carved Yosemite Valley left many hanging valleys that spawned the waterfalls that pour into the valley. Most of the waterways that fed these falls carved the hanging valleys into steep cascades, but Bridalveil Creek still leaps into the valley from the edge of the precipice, although that edge has moved back into an alcove from the original edge of the valley.