A planar sheet of outwash gravel thrust from the snout of Aktineq Glacier (B17)

Location: Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada

This is a photo of a planar sheet of outwash gravel thrust from the snout of Aktineq Glacier (B17). The image shows well the up-ice dip of the bed of well-rounded gravel and its slumping to the right to preserve the ice core of the resulting ridge (see also images 0041, 0042, 0043, and 0148). These temporarily ice-cored sediment masses litter the active glacier snout area of Aktineq Glacier and the stagnation area of its proglacial region. The sediment bodies that form these hills, cones, and ridges either are frozen onto the glacier’s base and thrust to the surface in the snout area or are pumped from the debris-rich base of the glacier, suspended in water under artesian pressure (see images 0030, 0031, and 0032).

Updated 04/09/2010 AW