The Hanging Wall Glaciers

If the entire system has melted and disappeared the empty high valleys are called hanging valleys.

The hanging wall glaciers.

The first known name given to the lake was lake maye named after elsie maye starbird nee lewis. 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. We opted to hitchhike. Avalanching and icefalls are the mechanisms for ice and snow transfer to the valley floor below.

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

This is hanging above a ravine of bare rock. We knew our only options were to either pay a worker at the tourism office in town to drive us there or to hitchhike. Dana glacier located in the northern cascades in washington state culminates in an icefall as the glacier flows over a nearly vertical cliff. Elsie maye was born c 1882 and married thomas starbird at age twenty in cooperstown north dakota.

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. Ventisquero colgante or the hanging glacier can be found in the queulat national park in chile.