Soil buried by flow till on right lateral moraine, Findelen Gletscher

Location: Near Zermatt, Switzerland 45° 59’ N, 7° 44’ 47” E

Close view of the upper part of the ice-contact face of the right lateral moraine of Findelen Gletscher, with the famous Matterhorn peak in the distance. The brown zone is a weakly developed soil buried by a flow till deposited the last time the glacier expanded to overtop the moraine in the mid-19th century. Images 0169 and 0170 show how this overtopping process creates new mass by shedding sediment down the outer flanks of the left lateral moraine of Tsidjiore Nouve glacier, located about 20km west of Findelen Gletscher. See Roethlisberger and Schneebeli (1979) for more details about moraine-forming processes for these glaciers.

Updated 04/29/2010 AW