Glaciers form where conditions are such that the annual snowfall exceeds annual snow melt (solid to liquid) and ablation (solid changing directly to vapour). During the last ice age huge glaciers and ice sheets covered most of Northern Europe including Scotland and the north of England. As these huge rivers of ice moved slowly downhill they scoured and smoothed the rocks beneath them forming U-shaped valleys. They also picked up debris, torn from the valley floor and walls by the moving ice, and other rocks which fell onto their surface, loosened from the mountain sides by “freeze-thaw” (i.e. water collecting in cracks then freezes and expands and on thawing the cracks are wider than they were before.) When the climate warms the glaciers retreat and leave behind the debris as piles of moraine.
Usually moraines are ridges of rock at the sides of the glacier (lateral moraine), in the centre (medial moraine) and where the snout (front end) of the glacier has been stationary for some time (terminal moraine) but occasionally moraine is left behind as small little mounds or ‘hummocks’. The evidence of past glacial action is all around you at this site – the huge series of vertical sandstone cliffs forming the sides of Liathach towering above you to the north were scoured by the glaciers, as were the eroded quartzite slopes of Beinn Eighe to the east. But it is the small hummocky piles of moraine on the opposite side of the road which are the unusual feature of this Earthcache. Look south west from the car park and notice the masses of tiny pointed small hills. These moraines were first mentioned by Geikie in 1863 as "a vast but unrecorded accumulation of glacier mounds blocking up a glen between Loch Torridon and Loch Maree' and a plate of the valley"
There used to be 4 noticeboards nearby that told folk more about how the landscape formed and its current management but these seem to have disappeared in the winter 2012/13.
To log this earthcache as a find e mail to tell me
(a) what the gaelic name means in english.(The answer was on 2 of the 4 information boards but you'll have to use the internet now these have gone missing and not been replaced)
(b) how long ago the land was covered by the glaciers.(The answer was on 2 of the 4 information boards that have gone missing & not been replaced but it's easy to find online)
(c) the direction the moraines are elongated. Is it N/S or E/W?
(d) what height (in metres) the moraine humps stand above the surroundings. &
(e) what is inside the hummocks.(The answer was on 2 of the 4 information boards that have gone missing & not been replaced so you'll have to a little research)
As usual adding a photo might be a good idea to prove you actually visited the spot.