Unlike conventional glaciers, rock glaciers appear as piles of rock that obscure large masses of unaccounted-for ice.
Unlike conventional glaciers, rock glaciers appear as piles of rock that obscure large masses of unaccounted-for ice. Rock glaciers are common in the Wasatch and Uinta ranges, even appearing on the Colorado Plateau in the La Sal Mountains near Moab.
Now, University of Utah geologists are bringing one of Utah’s largest rock glaciers, located under the towering, iconic summit of Mount Timpanogos near Salt Lake City and Provo, into sharp focus. Two new studies document how Timpanogos Rock Glacier formed and how much ice it contains. By measuring minute differences in gravitational pull between rock and ice, the team created a novel technique to image the 3D ice body within a large rock glacier.
Timpanogos Rock Glacier stores enough frozen water to fill 600 Olympic swimming pools or 1.5 million cubic meters. That is also equivalent to the volume of the largest pyramid at Giza in Egypt, according to Bronson Cvijanovich, a former graduate student in the Department of Geology & Geophysics.
“Timpanogos Rock Glacier is surprisingly ice rich. It is 83% ice and 17% loose rock, said Cvijanovich, the lead author of one of two studies overseen by geophysics professor Michael Thorne and glaciology professor Leif Anderson.
Read More: University of Utah
