Westchester Roche Moutonnée EarthCache

Westchester Roche moutonnée

Westchester Mountain is a community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in Cumberland County. The largest community nearby is Truro 80 km southeast and Amherst is 46 km northwest.  It can be accessed from exit 8 off the 104 series highway, which is part of the Cobequid pass. The Cobequid Pass is the name given to a 45 km (28 mi) tolled section of Nova Scotia Highway 104 (the Trans-Canada Highway) between Thomson Station, Cumberland County and Masstown, Colchester County in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

Roches moutonnées are asymmetric bedrock bumps or hills with a gently sloping and abraded upglacier (stoss) face and a quarried (or plucked) downglacier (lee) face that is typically blunter.

Roches moutonnées range in size from several  metres to several hundreds of metres across, and often occur in clusters. They may be found emerging from beneath actively deglaciating ice masses, or on the sides and bottom of deglaciated valleys where they were once overridden by glacial ice. Their distinctive form, which is partly linked with the orientation of glacier flow, make roches moutonnées useful to glaciologists aiming to reconstruct the flow direction of former glaciers.

Roches mountonnées develop their distinctive morphology due to the pattern of stress on a bedrock surface beneath a sliding glacier, as shown in the diagram below. On the stoss side of bedrock bumps, normal stresses are relatively high and particles embedded in the ice are moved across the underlying surface where they carry out abrasions. The evidence of such abrasion is the common occurrence of striations (i.e. scores and scratches on bedrock) on the sloping upper surface and flanks of roches moutonnées (see image below).

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Questions:

1. How high and long is the rock?

2. What direction was the glacier moving?

3. What is the formation to the north west?

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