The Hanging Wall Glaciers

When a major valley glacier system retreats and thins sometimes the tributary glaciers are left in smaller valleys high above the shrunken central glacier surface.

The hanging wall glaciers. Elsie maye was born c 1882 and married thomas starbird at age twenty in cooperstown north dakota. Dana glacier located in the northern cascades in washington state culminates in an icefall as the glacier flows over a nearly vertical cliff. A hanging glacier on mount shuksan. Ventisquero colgante or the hanging glacier can be found in the queulat national park in chile.

These are called hanging glaciers. The first known name given to the lake was lake maye named after elsie maye starbird nee lewis. This is hanging above a ravine of bare rock. For those without a car getting to ventisquero colgante hanging glacier is an adventure in itself.

It is the biggest attraction of queulat national park. It dominates a valley formed by mountains covered in valdivian temperate rainforest and feeds a river at the bottom of the valley as it melts. Avalanching and icefalls are the mechanisms for ice and snow transfer to the valley floor below. If the entire system has melted and disappeared the empty high valleys are called hanging valleys.

The lake of the hanging glacier is located at the end of the rather long horsethief creek valley just outside of invermere. 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.