Dulnain Bridge Roche Moutonee Earthcache EarthCache
Dulnain Bridge Roche Moutonee Earthcache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
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The Cairngorm Mountains were covered to a depth of many hundreds of metres of ice during the last ice age. As the glaciers moved from southwest to northeast, they ground over the harder underlying rock leaving these "roche moutonee" features. How the features got their name and their characteristic shape is desribed very well here on information stones which are built into a small scale moutonee feature itself!
Thousands of years ago, the whole area was covered by a vast sheet of glacier ice which was hundreds of metres thick. As the ice moved along, it ground down and shaped the underlying rock. As the ice melted, it left behind exposed rock in some places and deposited a mixture of boulders and clay in others. The exposed rocks have a distinctive shape with a gradual slope on the side of the ice advance and a steeper cliff like face on the lee side. The steeper sides are often shattered or “plucked” by the ice as it moved away. The rocks often occur in groups and were named by a Frenchman, H.B. De Sausure in 1787. He thought that the rounded rocks looked like the wavy wigs or “moutonnees” that were the fashion at the time. These were slicked down with mutton tallow – hence Roche Moutonnees or Rock Wigs with sheep fat!
The rocks are oval in shape and show smooth grooves that were left by the ice flows. The way in which the whole group is aligned is south west to north east. This shows the direction of the glacier flow all those years ago.
IMPORTANT.....To claim the cache, you MUST carry out two tasks.
1) The Educational bit...
a) How many thousand years ago was Dulnain Bridge covered in ice?
b) How thick was this ice?.
c) Email me this info (DO NOT POST IN YOUR LOG!!) I will then give you permission to log this earthcache.
2) Post a photo of yourself and / or GPS clearly in view with the built Roche Moutonee (the one with all the information panels) in the frame.
If I do not receive the two answers and/or a photo is not posted, you may have your log deleted.....
Educational guidelines for Earthcaches are set by Geocaching.com and GeoSociety.org (Earthcache) and have to be adhered to.
Please note: I no longer cache actively, but have kept these caches (Earth and Virtuals) for the enjoyment of those who do. I may not reply, therefore, to your email. If you are really looking for a reply, please don't log this cache.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)