The Glacier’s Gone 5 - A Stone Sheep! EarthCache
The Glacier’s Gone 5 - A Stone Sheep!
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The starting place for this waypoint is the Ogwen Warden Centre at N53 07.23 W 004 01.11. At the back of the Centre car park is a narrow downhill road, which you can drive down.
This is another sign of glaciers in this valley. The rock began as an irregular shaped outcrop on the floor of the valley. But then the glacier began to flow over it during the last Ice Age. The undersides of glaciers are like very coarse sandpaper. They constantly carry stones, rocks and grit down from the upper mountain. And like sandpaper it has a smoothing effect. Over centuries, like a huge sanding machine, the glacier worked on this rock buried deep beneath it. It smoothed the “upstream” side and the top of the rock into a rounded shape that looks (if you use your imagination) a bit like a sheep. Which is why they are called Roches Moutonnes (French = Sheep Rocks). They were first spotted near glaciers in Switzerland. The “downstream” side of Roches Moutonnes are usually a bit more craggy and rough. There is something else interesting about this rock. As you climb up on it, ignore the cracks and instead look for long parallel grooves. They are sometimes more clearly visible when the sun is going down, so you can see the shadows in the grooves. These grooves show the direction the ice was moving.
To prove you have been here, please take a photo of you or your GPS with Stone Sheep in the background, and answer the following question in your log:
WHAT DO YOU THINK CAUSED THE PARALLEL LINES ON THE TOP OF THE ROCK?
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