The Palisade Glacier is a

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as ...

located on the northeast side of the Palisades within the

John Muir Wilderness The John Muir Wilderness is a wilderness area that extends along the crest of the Sierra Nevada of California for , in the Inyo and Sierra National Forests. Established in 1964 by the Wilderness Act and named for naturalist John Muir, it encompa ...

in the central Sierra Nevada of California. The glacier descends from the flanks of four

fourteeners In the mountaineering parlance of the Western United States, a fourteener is a mountain peak with an elevation of at least . The 96 fourteeners in the United States are all west of the Mississippi River. Colorado has the most (53) of any single ...

, or mountain peaks over in elevation, including

North Palisade North Palisade is the third-highest mountain in the Sierra Nevada range of California, and one of the state's small number of peaks over 14,000 feet, known as fourteeners. It is the highest peak of the Palisades group of peaks in the central par ...

(), the highest peak of the Palisades group and the third highest peak in the Sierra Nevada overall. The cirque containing the Palisade Glacier has a history of thousands of years of glaciation. The modern glacier attained its last maximum extent during the Little Ice Age, between 250 and 170 years ago (a period also known as the Matthes glaciation in the Sierra Nevada). It currently has an area of and the glacier is long and wide. It is located between and moves at a rate of per year, although it is also retreating. Palisade Glacier is one of the few glaciers in California that terminates in a

proglacial lake In geology, a proglacial lake is a lake formed either by the damming action of a moraine during the retreat of a melting glacier, a glacial ice dam, or by meltwater trapped against an ice sheet due to isostatic depression of the crust around th ...

dammed by its former moraine, turquoise-colored from the glacial powder suspended in the water. The Big Pine Lakes below the glacier are also the same color. Another feature of the glacier is a moulin, which was formed in a drought during 1977, and a

bergschrund A bergschrund (from the German for ''mountain cleft'') or rimaye (from French; ) is a crevasse that forms where moving glacier ice separates from the stagnant ice or firn above. It is often a serious obstacle for mountaineers, who sometimes ab ...

References

Glaciers of California Glaciers of the Sierra Nevada (United States) Glaciers of Inyo County, California Inyo National Forest {{US-glacier-stub

See also in the United States

References